The water-front of the town extended for a considerable distance on each side of the harbour, and, as they had not the slightest idea whether the tumble-down wharf to which Grauber had brought them lay to the west or east of it, they were, at first, undecided in which direction to begin their search. It then occurred to Gregory that if the police were already hunting for them on the mainland they would be looking for two men in company, so that they were much less likely to be identified apart than if they remained together. In consequence, it was clear that not only would it be wise for them to separate but that by so doing they might achieve their object more quickly; upon which they agreed that Gregory should take the east side of the harbour and Stefan the west, and that they should meet again in an hour’s time outside a decayed-looking onion-spired church near which they were standing when they made the arrangement.
Gregory spent his hour poking about among mean streets and evil-smelling cul-de-sacs, but he could find nothing resembling the wharf for which he was seeking; but having had only a glimpse of it in the darkness of a snowy night, he feared that he might have seen but failed to recognise it, and returned in rather a depressed mood to the rendezvous.
Kuporovitch was there and had proved more fortunate. Within twenty minutes he had found the place and had spent the rest of his hour very profitably in buying a roomy hold-all, provisions which would keep them going for several days to go into it, and two new torches. Having announced his good news, he set off for the wharf again, while Gregory followed him at a discreet distance.
The garage proved to be padlocked, but there was no one about, so they forced the doors with a rusty strip of iron that they found in the gutter. To their relief the Black Maria was still there and inside it lay the twisted body of the murdered Ogpu guard. Rigor mortis had set in hours before, so they had great difficulty in getting his uniform off, but by considerable exertions and the breaking of some of his limbs, they managed it. Their gruesome task was made slightly less repugnant by the fact that the cold had prevented the onset of decay, so the corpse smelt no more unpleasant than would have a living specimen of unwashed humanity.
Having stripped the guard to his underclothes they carried the body over to a far corner of the garage and pushed it behind some cases that were there. Kuporovitch then proceeded to change into the uniform. It was a chilly business and the guard’s tunic proved uncomfortably tight across his broad shoulders, but it would just button up at any time it should seem necessary for him to appear properly dressed. Meanwhile, Gregory remembered having heard Grauber say that the cases contained explosives, so, feeling that a few charges might possibly come in useful, he opened some of the cases with the rusty iron and transferred several packages of gelignite and fuses to one of the cells of the van.
It was now getting on for half past three but they thought it much too risky to drive the stolen Black Maria through the town in daylight and, knowing that they would be up all night, decided to put in a few hours’ sleep while they had the chance. Owing to the cold they thought it sensible to climb into the van for such little additional protection as it might afford, and on doing so they stumbled on a bonus—in the form of the guard’s pistol, which must have jerked from its holster as he fell dead. It was fully loaded and, much heartened at being armed once more, Kuporovitch slipped it back into the holster at his belt. Then they both settled down to sleep.
When they awoke it was a little after seven o’clock. Opening the doors of the garage a crack, they saw that the autumn night had already closed down on the north Russian town, and that it was snowing again. The cover it afforded suited them very well, provided the fall was not too heavy and blocked the roads, but that was unlikely, as winter was only just setting in and every mile would take them further southward to somewhat warmer regions.
The only preparation they had to make was locking Gregory into one of the cells and, when it came to the point, he found himself distinctly loth to adopt his own suggestion; as, once he was locked in, should anything happen to Stefan his prisoner would be in no position to regain his freedom. They found that the cells had spring locks which there was no way of opening from the inside but could be slipped back from the outside by a pressure of the hand; so they got over the difficulty by jamming one of them with a small piece of wood so that the door could be shut, and appeared to be locked, but could be forced open by a firm pressure from within.
When Gregory had settled himself in the cell, Kuporovitch backed the van out of the garage, got down again to close its doors, then climbed into the driver’s seat, and they set off on their long journey.
For Gregory the first hour was so uneventful that, in the blackness of his cell with nothing to occupy him, he nearly fell asleep again. For Stefan, it was nearly, but not quite, so monotonous, as he had to guess his way as best he could in the snow and darkness. It was easy enough to find the main road that led south out of the town, as they had passed it that afternoon after turning away from the railway station, but once clear of the houses he had to run on blind for a time until he could pick up the distant mutter of the guns as a guide to the direction in which the battle-front lay.
They had covered the best part of twenty-five miles, meeting only a few cars and an occasional column of lorries, and he could hear the guns clearly above the noise of his engine, before he was met with his first challenge. As he pulled up a little party of soldiers appeared from the side of the road and asked him for a lift.
On getting close enough to recognise the vehicle as a Black Maria, they were greatly amused and started to joke about it. Kuporovitch told them he was taking an important prisoner to headquarters, and that to unlock the back of the van for them was more than his job was worth; so, seeing that they could not all crowd on to the box beside him they pressed him no further. He took the opportunity to ask them the name of the next town along the road, and they said that if he drove straight on he would come to Krasnogvardeisk in another three versts or so.
From this point on there were increasing signs of military activity and it was clear that they were now passing through the back area of the defence line. Outside the town he was pulled up again, and twice more while going through it. On each occasion he told the same story and it sounded so plausible that only in one instance was he asked to which headquarters he was going.
“The location of all headquarters are secret,” he replied severely. “You should know better than to ask.”
Abashed by this rebuke, and no doubt impressed by his Ogpu uniform, the leader of the patrol apologised, and Kuporovitch chuckled quietly to himself as he drove on.
From the little he could see of the town and the dim red lights that were placed to give warning of numerous shell craters in the streets, he judged the place to be half in ruins. On the far side of it guns banged every few minutes with increasing noise and about a mile further on he was pulled up again.
When questioned, he made his usual reply, but the N.C.O. in charge of the patrol said, “If you go on much further in this direction you’ll find yourself in No-Man’s-land.”
“I must have taken the wrong turning then, back there in the town,” Kuporovitch growled, adding a fluent spate of Russian curses. “Is there a by-road leading east before I’m likely to run into the Germans? If so, to take it will save me going back.
“There’s a cross-roads about half a mile south from here. They shell it sometimes, but their patrols haven’t yet penetrated that far,” replied the N.C.O.
“Thanks, chum. How are things going round here?” asked Kuporovitch in a conversational tone.
“Not so bad,” the N.C.O. shrugged phlegmatically. “They gained a bit of ground today—took the wood down there in the valley. But we’ve been shelling it for the last four hours, so they’ve probably withdrawn by now. If not our boys will have ’em out of it tomorrow.”
“That’s the spirit!” Kuporovitch grinned. “Good luck, soldier!” and with a wave of his hand he got going again.
When he reached th
e cross-roads he did not turn east, but continued straight down the road. He was praying now that he would not be halted again, as, if he was, he would have to say that he had lost his way, and turn back. The road began to dip gently and he knew that he must have reached the edge of the valley.
Suddenly calls to halt rang out from both sides of the road, and he guessed that he must now be running through the main defence zone. He hesitated only a second. The snow was still falling thickly. Visibility was poor, and it was all that he could do to make out the road in front with his hooded headlights. Fortunately he was on a long straight strip. Switching out the lights, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator, taking a chance that if the van was shot at in the darkness most of the bullets would go wide.
For a few moments his heart was in his mouth. It seemed certain that even if the van escaped coming to grief through running off the road some bullets were bound to hit it. But as it had come from the soldiers’ rear they knew that it must be a Russian vehicle, so they refrained from firing at it, simply cursing its driver for some poor fool who did not realise that the enemy had gained a mile that morning.
After five hundred yards, Kuporovitch flicked on his headlights to get a sight of the road, narrowly escaped a shell crater, and flicked them out again. Then he reduced his speed to ten miles an hour and nosed his way cautiously downhill. Going slowly, the light was just sufficient for him to sense rather than see a steep bank that ran along one side of the road and provided a rough guide to its direction.
Another fainter challenge reached him, doubtless from a picket ensconced in a fox-hole somewhere on the roadside, but again he ignored it. A machine-gun began to stutter.
“Ping … ping … ping!” Three of the bullets rang loudly on the side of the van and others whistled overhead. But the sound brought sudden comfort to Kuporovitch. It had not previously occurred to him that a Black Maria would be constructed of metal, in order that prisoners should not be able to cut their way out through its sides; and that he was, in fact, driving what amounted to a light armoured vehicle which would resist most things short of a direct hit by a shell.
He had accelerated again as the machine-gun opened, but realising that the post could have caught no more than a glimpse of the van through the curtain of falling snow, he slowed down once more. A few hundred yards further on he could dimly make out the forms of trees along the roadside and knew that he must have reached the wood about which the N.C.O. had spoken. Pulling up, he got down and went round to the back of the van to consult with Gregory.
They agreed that they must now be in No-Man’s-Land, and that the time had come to change places. Night and the snowstorm rendered any but minor operations impossible, so only the sporadic activity which continues day and night on even the quietest front was in progress. Occasionally a heavy German shell trundled overhead in the direction of Krasnogvardeisk and at intervals of about five minutes a Russian field battery was sending salvoes crashing into the wood. As swiftly as they could, they changed places and, with Gregory driving, set off again.
As quickly as he dared he drove on through the wood, to get away from the crashing of the Russian shells. After a quarter of a mile the road forked, and as Moscow lay to the south-east he took the left-hand turning. From that point the road began to rise again and a few hundred yards further on the wood ended.
They had scarcely reached open country when another machine-gun opened on them. The bullets went wide, but they were coming from the front so he felt fairly confident that they must be German. As he could not get off the road the only thing to do was to halt, otherwise the Germans would take the noise of his engine for that of a tank or armoured car and, imagining that the Russians were launching a night attack, turn their artillery on to him. At the top of his voice he began to shout:
“Hi, there! Help! I am lost in this blasted snowstorm!”
The machine-gun fired two more short bursts and its bullets spattered down on to the road about fifty feet ahead of the Black Maria. Between the bursts Gregory kept on shouting with all the power of his lungs; then he took a big chance, switched on his headlights and, jumping down, ran to the side of the road. Even there, another burst aimed at the lights with a traversing gun might have caught him, but the firing ceased and he recommenced his yelling.
After about three minutes a group of dim figures appeared through the snow. He put his hands above his head and waited, a prey to terrible anxiety. If they were Germans he had good hopes that things would be alright, but if they proved, after all, to be Russians, the game was up.
To his immense relief one of the figures stepped forward and, covering him with a sub-machine gun, asked him in German who he was and what the hell he was doing there.
“Gottseidank!” he exclaimed. “I lost my way in the storm, and for the last half-hour I’ve been terrified that I’d be captured by the Russians.” He then went on to explain that he was driving a captured Black Maria with an important prisoner in it, had taken a wrong turning further west, gone down the other fork road into the valley, and finding that the wood was being shelled had realised, to his horror, that he was in No-Man’s-land.
In such conditions of darkness and snow the story was perfectly plausible, as the Unteroffizier who was questioning him knew that in such weather pickets kept under cover as much as possible, and that if the van had gone down the road further west the outposts there might quite well have taken the noise of its engine for that of an armoured car going forward to reconnoitre.
Having growled that Gregory was darned lucky not to have been captured or shot, he told him that he could proceed, and ordered one of his men to get in the driver’s cab as a guide up to company headquarters.
They drove off up the hill, on the brow of which they were challenged by another picket, but the soldier on the box gave the password for the night and, half a mile further on, they pulled up at a burnt-out farmhouse.
Against one of its walls a row of rough lean-tos had been erected. From one of them came a few chinks of light and the soldier led Gregory into it. A young officer was sitting dozing there beside a small table that had a field telephone on it.
Gregory thanked his stars that the place was not a house or heated hutment, in which he would have been expected to remove his furs, as his main danger now was that he was not wearing a German uniform, so his furs were his only protection against discovery. When he had told his story again the officer seemed fairly satisfied but demanded to see the prisoner.
Taking him outside, Gregory undid the van, pretended to unlock the cell and exposed Kuporovitch to view. He, too, was wearing his furs, but at the sight of his visitors he stood up and let them fall open, sufficient for it to be seen that underneath he had on a foreign uniform.
In halting Russian the officer asked him where he had been captured, and he replied, “At Kingisepp on the Luga.”
The officer then asked Gregory where he was taking his prisoner to, and he replied: “To the Gestapo headquarters in Novgorod. This man is a native of Kalinin and it is hoped that we may be able to get information out of him which will prove useful on our Moscow front—at least that is what my officer told me.”
There seemed no more to be said, so Kuporovitch was again locked in his cell, the officer gave Gregory careful directions as to the road he should take, and, with an immensely lighter heart, he drove off.
The journey from Oranienbaum and the crossing of the front had taken only a little over two hours, so it was not yet half past nine and they still had the best part of the long Russian night before them. As they penetrated further behind the German lines they now and again met a convoy bringing up supplies and passed occasional cars or solitary lorries, but no one bothered any longer to challenge them, taking it for granted that any vehicle in that area must be German.
Gradually the sound of the guns grew fainter until they could no longer be heard. Soon after midnight the snow ceased falling. Every few miles they passed through a village or small township but all of
them consisted of the blackened shells of buildings, having been burnt out in accordance with the scorched earth policy. At a quarter past two in the morning, on passing through a long street of scattered buildings, many of which still had their roofs on, Gregory felt sure that he was entering the north-eastern suburbs of the ancient city of Novgorod, once the capital of all northern Russia. They had accomplished the first hundred miles of their journey in seven hours, and seeing the state of the roads, he was well satisfied.
His main fear now was that he might run into a Gestapo man who would be intrigued by the sight of a Russian Black Maria and pull it up to ask awkward questions. Fortunately, it was still the middle of the night, and the only people about were a few belated soldiers but, feeling certain there would be a police post in the centre of the city, having driven a little way into it, he took a turning to the left and continued on by a succession of by-ways, until he had worked his way round to its south-western suburbs. He lost half an hour in this manoeuvre, but eventually found his way back on the main road to Kresti, Kalinin and Moscow.
Since the snow had ceased he had been making much better going, and two hours after leaving Novgorod he reached the outskirts of the little town of Kresti. Here he followed the same manœuvre as in Novgorod, but the place being much smaller, did not lose so much time in skirting it, and was clear of the town by five o’clock.
He was very tired now after seven and a half hours’ continuous driving, but he knew that if he could cover another twenty miles or so he should reach the Valdai Hills, where there would be woods, and good cover in which to lie up during the daytime. By six o’clock he was leaving the flat plain behind and entering an undulating area of broken forest land. At twenty past six he found a turning to the right which would bring him deeper into the hilly area. Two miles down it he found a by-road leading east, so he drove some way along it until he was deep in the forest, then finding a track took the van in among the snow-covered trees and pulled up. Dawn was only just breaking and during the long night they had successfully negotiated some hundred and eighty miles.
Come into my Parlour Page 37
