Before Voroshilov could speak again he said: “I am in no position to make conditions on my side, sir. But I do want you to know that Kuporovitch was led into this thing entirely by me. That is true from the very beginning, when we first met at Kandalaksha. It is true that he was already toying with the idea of leaving Soviet Russia—but only toying with it; and I doubt very much if he would ever actually have done so if I had not come on the scene. It was I who persuaded him to leave and I did so because I felt that he would be of great help to me in my own work against the Germans. That had definitely proved the case, and I—well—I don’t think I want to accept my life if you will not also give him his.”
From having remained silent for a long time, Kuporovitch suddenly burst into a spate of words:
“Sacré nom, but this is absurd! Do not believe him, Marshal! He does not know what he is talking about! I may not be an intellectual, but I am no child to be led. What I did, I did of my own free will. He is lying now, out of friendship; but I will not have it. I deserve to die, and I am not afraid of death. I insist that you ignore——”
“Silence!” barked the Marshal, cutting him short. “I am dealing with this matter, not either of you!”
He lit another cigarette and went on more quietly: “It is a fine thing to see the loyalty of good comrades. There is nothing finer in this world. But in this case the efforts of you both to protect one another were unnecessary. I had already made up my mind about Stefan Kuporovitch.” His glance shifted to Gregory.
“He may, perhaps, never have told you of it, and it is praiseworthy in him that he should not have recalled the affair in an attempt to influence my judgment now; but many years ago, in the old war when we were fighting the White reactionaries together, he once saved me from being cut down by a Cossack. It is to his strong right arm that I owe the fact that I lived to become a Marshal of the Republic.”
Kuporovitch shrugged and smiled awkwardly. “Oh, it was nothing, Clim. You mean when we broke Deniken’s army at Novocherkassk, don’t you? But it all occurred in a mêlée, and it was the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone, in any battle.”
“Nevertheless, one does not forget such things,” Voroshilov replied. “And in return, I am prepared to give you your life on the same conditions as I have just given Mr. Sallust his.”
“Why, that’s mighty generous of you!” Kuporovitch laughed suddenly. “I must confess that I never expected to get out of this place alive. Of course I’ll promise not to try to escape, and I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”
“You will not write it either, or seek in any way to communicate any message, however seemingly harmless, to anyone at all,” added the Marshal with a sudden access of caution.
“I promise,” nodded Kuporovitch cheerfully.
“That applies to you, too.” Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “It is implied in the undertaking you have already given me. Is that understood?”
“Yes, I agree,” Gregory said, concealing his reluctance to concede this last promise. His agile brain had already been at work while the Marshal was talking to Kuporovitch, and it had occurred to him that somehow, some way, he might just possibly be able to get a message through to Sir Pellinore simply saying: “Am a prisoner in Siberia, but mission successful, go ahead.” It would not have carried one hundredth part of the weight of the personal report that had he been free to return he could now have made, but it would have been better than nothing, and would not have contravened the promise he had made not to disclose Russia’s future strategy. Now, the last hope was gone. His life was safe, but he was committed to remain as silent as the grave—in fact to pass into oblivion—until the end of the war.
Voroshilov looked from one to the other of them and said: “I would add only one thing. Since you have faced peril together and have this strong bond of friendship, whatever your political ideologies may be, I hope that when the war is over you will use your appreciation of one another as individuals to bring your two countries closer together, in order that the fruits of victory may not be lost.”
He signed to the prison commandant, who pressed his bell, and the guards came in. The two prisoners thanked the Marshal again for giving them their lives, and were marched back to their cells.
Kuporovitch lay down on his bed and gazed at the ceiling. He could still hardly realise that not only would he be alive tomorrow and the day after, but probably, all being well, for years to come. The idea of being sent to Siberia had no terrors for him. It was no colder there than it had been at Kandalaksha; and although it did not sound so good to be a prisoner as the governor of a fortress, the former rôle had certain compensations. In a political prison there would be no hard labour, but indefinite leisure to think and plan for the future, and probably quite a passable library of books to read. In any case, unless a prisoner was fool enough to assault a warder he was in no danger of losing his life. Whereas a Soviet Fortress Commander was never certain, from one day to the next, that a political commission might not arrive with the object of holding a court-martial on him, owing to some rumour that the Kremlin had got hold of, and having him shot.
He accepted the fact that they were debarred from completing their mission philosophically; feeling much more sorry about that on Gregory’s account than on his own. From what he had seen in Britain and now knew of his own country’s resources he had no doubt at all which side would win the war. The Germans would be licked to a frazzle in a year or two, then he would be able to get back to his little Madeleine.
Gregory was far from being so resigned to the fate that had befallen him. He still felt a rather breathless sensation from having so narrowly escaped paying the final penalty, but to him the idea of being incarcerated for an indefinite period seemed grim in the extreme. He knew far more about the strength of Germany and the relative weakness of Britain than Kuporovitch, and was by no means so optimistic about a comparatively early Allied victory. He saw himself, day after day, for weeks, months, years, performing some sort of forced labour in the most miserable conditions. He would be cold, ill-clothed, ill-fed and almost certainly subject to a harsh discipline. It was a nightmare picture of a soul-destroying existence that he conjured up; yet to save his life he had readily accepted it, and, by his promise, he had definitely burned his boats so far as any attempt to escape was concerned.
The fact that he had been so astonishingly successful in his mission, yet was now unable to get away from Russia, or even to pass on to Sir Pellinore some inkling of the facts he had gathered, made him livid with rage, but he knew that there was no way out. He tried to console himself with the thought that during the past two years he had been able to do far more to damage the Nazis than most of his countrymen would have the opportunity to do, even if the war went on for another three or four years. He knew, too, that he had been fantastically lucky not to have been caught and shot long before this. Even in this last venture his luck had not entirely run out, as a prison in Siberia would be incomparably better than a Nazi concentration camp. He had been lucky, too, in having to deal with a man like Voroshilov, instead of some official of the Ogpu, who would most certainly have had him shot out of hand.
His recent contacts with Voroshilov had engendered in him a great admiration for the Soviet Marshal, although he felt that he had been a bit harsh in his condemnation of poor old Stefan’s wish to spend his declining years in the ease and comfort still offered by the bourgeois cities of the West. After all, Stefan’s talk of nights on the spree in Montmartre was mostly froth, arising from memories of a hectic youth. He was very happily married now and, given a chance to settle down, would make a respectable and useful citizen in any country of the Old World.
As an intensely strong individualist himself Gregory did not agree with much that the Marshal had inferred. The doctrine of ensuring every child a good start in life and equal opportunities was fair and right, but the intelligent and hard-working would always rise above the rest, and it did not seem to him a practical proposition that the
few should be expected to devote their lives exclusively to making things easy for the majority. In time, such a system was bound to undermine the vigour of the race. If the rewards of ability and industry were to be taken from those who rose to the top they would cease to strive, and if the masses were pampered too much, they would regard protection from all the hazards of life as their right and become lazy. There was only a limited amount of wealth in every national kitty. If it was not added to year by year by vigorous enterprise, made possible through the majority of the people doing an honest day’s work, but instead, gradually drained away in bettering the condition of the masses without their making an adequate return, the nation that followed such a policy was bound to go into a decline; then, the general standard of living would fall, instead of the country becoming a Utopia, as the theorists fondly imagined.
The Marshal was, Gregory knew, an idealist, and no doubt he still believed in the principles for which he had fought so desperately when he was young; but even in Russia the theories were not working out. The Communist leaders had achieved great things, but to do so they had been forced to enslave the people. In theory they were cared for from the cradle to the grave, but free education, medical services and coffins were small compensation for the fact that they lived in conditions, and were made to work hours, that would have appalled the working classes of any other country. And now that they were at war they were being herded like cattle to the slaughter, without those they loved even being given the opportunity to learn if they were still alive, wounded or dead.
Gregory thought it curious that Voroshilov should know that, yet persist in his belief that all must come right in the end, and condemn Stefan for his lack of desire to remain in the service of such a State. However, his political convictions apart, he had treated them with a justice and humanity that commanded the greatest respect. And it was that respect which made Gregory feel that, having freely given his word to such a man, he could not possibly break it.
The cold of his cell was now worrying him again, and made him even more gloomy as he thought of the still greater cold he would inevitably be called upon to endure in distant Siberia. He realised too with almost physical pain that it would be a long time—a very long time—before he would again see Erika. That she would wait for him he did not doubt at all, but it was desperately hard on them both that they should be condemned to a separation which could hardly last less than several years. She would, he knew, worry about him terribly, once his disappearance had been reported to London by the British Embassy in Moscow and his return became seriously overdue. A merciful Providence spared him the knowledge that for nearly a month she had been a prisoner of the Gestapo, as, had he known, the thought would have driven him crazy.
In his cell, further down the line, Kuporovitch was still thinking about Madeleine. He wondered if, after the war, she would want to go back to Paris to live. He was not altogether certain that he wanted to himself, now. When he had been brought before Voroshilov he had very sensibly refrained from producing his British passport and endeavouring to screen himself behind it, knowing that to do so would have been quite futile and might only have made matters worse; but that did not affect the fact that he was now a British citizen. True, he had accepted British nationality only for the purpose of this mission; but now he had it he did not think that they would take it away from him, except at his own request.
He still thought it a tragedy that there had been a revolution in Russia. There had been abuses of power before it, of course, but nothing like the abuses of power there had been since. The 1914–1916 war had already brought about a great change in the attitude of the Government and many reforms; practically the whole of the middle and upper classes had become convinced liberals and even the Grand Dukes had been for forcing a constitutional monarchy on the Czar. Had it not been that the weak-willed Czar was under the thumb of his German wife, and she, in turn, under the influence of the evil Monk Rasputin, Russia might have been spared those five years of bloodshed and anarchy; and by this time her liberal intellectuals would most probably have led her into a new era of individual liberty and prosperity.
He felt that Clim had behaved darned decently but, at the same time had his limitations. The Marshal did not know everything, and one thing that was a closed book to him was the pre-war way of life in the great democracies of the West; since he had never even visited them. Kuporovitch had taken his dressing-down in good part, but he reserved his right to his own opinion. One thing, however, was now quite clear. He had returned to Russia only in an endeavour to serve her when she appeared to be in peril, but from now on she had no use for him. Therefore he would stick to his new nationality. After all, if one could not be a Russian the next best thing was to be a Britisher. Perhaps Madeleine would want to live for part of each year in France. Well, that would be all right with him; but he would make his home in England, and settle down somewhere near Gregory and Erika. After all, things had not panned out so badly. The year or so in Siberia would soon pass. The simple but adequate food, the regular hours of prison routine and the enforced abstinence from drink would make him marvellously fit by the time he got out, and probably add ten years to his life. On this comforting thought he went to sleep.
But not so Gregory. He was pacing his cell like a lion in a cage and brooding miserably upon the incredibly depressing prospect that loomed ahead of him. Yet, whichever way he looked at it, there was no escape. He had been caught before and thrown into prison, but, then, he had always been able to occupy his active wits in seeking a way out. There was no prison in existence from which escapes had not been made by men possessing courage, resource, patience and determination. Tunnels could be bored under floors, the iron bars of windows gradually sawn through, and guards coerced or bribed. But now, all such thoughts were futile. It was no consolation to think of the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen who had become prisoners of war for the duration. They, at least, could still make plans and attempt a getaway; he was out of the game for good.
Eventually the hunk of bread and mug of brownish liquid that constituted his breakfast were brought to him. He ate the bread and swallowed the muck with the appallingly grim thought that his food for years to come would consist only of such miserable fare. He would not have minded that so much if only there had been one ray of hope that he could devise a way of bringing about his release within a not unreasonable time. But there was no way. He had got himself into a trap and in it he must remain, like a live man in a grave, until, years hence, the ending of the war brought about his resurrection. At last, more depressed than he had ever been in his life before, he flung himself down on his bed and sank into a heavy sleep from sheer mental exhaustion.
The guards who brought his midday and evening meals set them down inside his cell, but did not disturb him. He was still sleeping when they came again, roused him, and roughly ordered him out. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was close on ten o’clock, and realised that he had slept all day. Grimly he thought that, where he was going, he would at least have plenty of time to sleep in, and that he must try to learn to sleep as long as he could, because sleep brought forgetfulness.
He greeted Stefan as cheerfully as he could in the corridor, and they were both taken upstairs and out into the courtyard. They no longer had the fear of it that they had had the night before, and obediently got into a Black Maria which was waiting there for them. The van had a row of six cells on each side and they were locked into two of these. The other cells appeared to be empty, but there was a tip-up seat for a guard at the rear end of the narrow passage that separated the two rows of cells, and when a soldier with a machine pistol had taken it he was locked in with them. With a jolt the van started off and drove out of the courtyard.
The prisoners assumed that they were being driven to an airfield somewhere outside Leningrad, from which they were to be flown to Siberia. It seemed that the Marshal had lost no time in arranging for their departure; but that was hardly surprising seeing how anxio
us he had been that no mischance should occur which might possibly result in their capture by the Germans. Remote as such a possibility might be, he had ample justification for taking immediate steps to guard against it, as the capture of an Englishman in a Russian theatre of war would have been certain to lead to a particularly rigorous examination of the prisoner and, under torture, even Gregory himself could give no absolute assurance that he would not give away the vital secrets that he had learnt about Russia’s future strategy.
During their three days in the basement cells of the Lubianka they had hardly been conscious of the unceasing battle that raged in a great arc round the city. On a few occasions they had heard a dull crump, as a bomb or heavy shell had landed in the vicinity of the prison, and twice the floors of the cells had seemed to rock slightly from a nearby concussion. But now, as the van drove smoothly through the almost deserted streets they could again hear the distant rumble of the bombardment, punctuated here and there by a louder explosion.
After about a quarter of an hour the Black Maria came jerkily to a halt. There came the sound of muffled voices. A moment or two passed, then the guard in the back of the van shouted a question. A shell burst in the near distance with a reverberating roar Another shout came in reply and they started to move again.
As the van ran on Gregory thought of the many types of blitz which he had heard during the past two years of war; the sporadic shelling across the Maginot Lines, the devastating bombardment by the Russians of Vipuri in the Finnish war, the spectacular but comparatively harmless demonstration by the Luftwaffe against Oslo on the first night the Germans had gone into Norway, the concentrated fury that had devastated Rotterdam; the tragically light fire of the British artillery as they retreated on Dunkirk; the roar of the first months’ blitz on London and the thunder of the terrific anti-aircraft barrage that he had recently heard in Moscow.
Come into my Parlour Page 28
