“Yes, that’s typical of our methods,” Gregory grinned. “I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it that, law or no law, Germany would invade Sweden in an attempt to reach those mines first if an Allied Expeditionary Force were landed in Norway.”
“But if the Scandinavian countries do not support us themselves, and refuse to allow other countries to support us by sending troops through them, they will be signing their own death warrants,” Loumkoski argued. “Finland can hold out for a month or two but without help we must eventually be crushed by the weight of the Russian masses. Once we are defeated Russia will push West and seize the iron mines for herself with those ice-free Atlantic ports on the Norwegian coast that she is so anxious to acquire and the whole of Northern Scandinavia. Surely the Norwegians and the Swedes would rather risk trouble with Germany than allow that to happen?”
“Perhaps. I only hope so, for your sake,” Gregory replied.
“If the Scandinavians let troops through, how soon do you think military aid from the Western Powers could reach us?”
“It’s difficult to say and it greatly depends on the state of the railway from Narvik, but presumably that’s in good condition, and if the Allies acted at once their first troops might be arriving in the battle-line in about a month.”
Loumkoski sighed with the satisfaction of wish fulfilment. “In that case we’ll be all right.”
Gregory’s forecast had been given entirely with a view to cheering their new friend. His private opinion was very different.
In Gregory’s opinion, if the Western Powers were asked for aid by Finland, and decided to send it, they would not do so until the spring. Submarines are slow-moving vessels and as long as Russia’s under-sea fleet was concentrated at Murmansk it might be dealt with in better weather. An aircraft-carrier and flotillas of submarine chasers could be sent up there which would probably account for a considerable portion of it before the Expeditionary Force sailed. By the spring, too, it was said that the Allies’ aircraft production would have caught up with that of Germany, which would better enable the Western Powers to protect their troops from aerial attack while disembarking.
It was a sad business, but, apart from volunteers such as had gone out to the Spanish war, Gregory did not feel that the Finns could really count on any military aid for the present—unless Norway and Sweden decided that their own fate was linked with that of Finland.
Madame Loumkoski came in with coffee and sweet cakes but they had barely received cups of the steaming brew when the air-raid sirens sounded once again.
Although the Finns had been working desperately hard these last weeks to provide air-raid shelters they had had to concentrate their efforts in the more populous parts of the city; so when Gregory suggested that they should all go to the nearest, Loumkoski told him that there was no proper shelter less than half a mile distant. The deep booming of the Russian planes could already be heard, so their host said swiftly that they might easily be killed on their way through the streets and that it would be less risky for them to take refuge in a trench which he had dug in his back garden.
They hurried out through the snow and found it to be a long, narrow ditch about four feet wide partially covered with planking and a few sand-bags. Some rubble had been thrown into its bottom to drain away the water but the sides were damp, cold, virgin earth, and there were no seats, so having scrambled down, they had to crouch uncomfortably in it.
They were hardly inside the trench before the bombs began to fall; but it seemed that the Russians were directing their main attack upon the port, which was some miles away. The distant thudding continued for about ten minutes then a few crashes sounded nearer. Suddenly there sounded the sharp “rat-tat-tat” of machine-gun fire overhead. Loumkoski poked his head out from underneath the boards and gave a whoop of joy. “It’s one of ours,” he shouted; “it’s one of ours!”
They had been about to pull him back but his excitement was so infectious that even Gregory temporarily lost the extreme caution which had so often been the means of saving his life. He had seen dog-fights, in the air before and knew that it was a senseless risk to expose oneself to possible death for the sake of seeing the fun; but there was something so very gallant about that solitary Finnish airman up there in the midst of the Red air-armada that for once he felt bound to take a chance and see the result of the fight.
The small Finnish plane had just circled under a big black bomber and come up on its tail. There was another burst of machine-gun fire; a wisp of smoke streamed out behind the Russian plane, then it seemed to falter. Next moment it was hurtling earthwards with red flames spurting from it and a great tail of oily black smoke smearing the blue sky in its track; while the little Finnish plane streaked away to northwards to attack another enemy.
It seemed that the whole neighbourhood had also come out from their shelters to watch the fight, as the sound of cheering began on every side from the moment the Russian was hit and swelled to a roar as it crashed like a box of lighted fireworks about a quarter of a mile away.
The cheering continued for a moment but was cut short by a fresh series of crashes quite close at hand; another Red plane was unloading its cargo. The earth shook and trembled as each of the great bombs burst with the roar of thunder somewhere on the far side of the house. Stones, earth, and pieces of red tile from the roof-tops came sailing through the air to fall with a clatter upon the boards of the trench under which they had once more taken refuge. For another quarter of an hour they crouched there until the detonations ceased. A few moments later the “All-Clear” signal sounded for the third time in five hours.
It was only a little after three when they climbed out of the trench but the early winter dusk was already falling and Gregory felt that in another half-hour or so they might make their attempt to secure the Sabina. In the little sitting-room of the Loumkoskis’ house they found the coffee which Madame had provided, and which they had had to abandon on account of the air-raid, still fairly warm. She wanted to re-heat it for them but they would not let her, as they knew that she was anxious to find out what had happened to her neighbours and give them any help she could.
While they drank the tepid coffee they stood looking out of the window at the sad spectacle the street now presented. Three air-raids in five hours had shaken even the courage of the Finns and—very wisely, Gregory thought—all those who had no duties which detained them in the city had apparently decided to evacuate it.
In front of the small, wooden, workers’ houses, sleighs and carts were drawn up and on to them men, women and children were hastily piling their bedding and their most precious belongings. Already a continuous stream of evacuees was passing down the street from the direction of the centre of the city towards the open countryside. Many of them had no conveyances and carried huge bundles on their backs while they led small children by the hand. It was a sight which filled the watching party at the window with a bitter anger against the Russians and the deepest pity for these poor people who had been driven from their homes.
The hearts of the girls were wrung more than those of the men, because they had already been some weeks in Finland and so appreciated more fully the horror of such an evacuation in mid-winter up in that northern land. They knew that, unlike the country round London, Paris, and Berlin, where hundreds of thousands of houses could be used for billets in such an emergency, the Finnish countryside outside Helsinki was very little built over. Only a very few of these poor refugees who were being driven forth by the terror of mutilation and death would find accommodation in the farms and barns; the vast majority would have to camp out in the woods where the snow was already two feet deep upon the ground. Thousands of them who were fleeing without even bedding would be frozen to death during the night or get frost-bite which would injure them for life.
Gregory, too, felt particularly badly about it, because he knew that he had been to a large extent responsible for the last-minute decision of the Finnish Government to defy the might of Russia, b
ut he tried to comfort himself with the thought that the Finns were at least still free men; whereas, if they had surrendered without firing a shot a month or two would have found thousands of them marching through the Russian snows in forced labour gangs.
Madame Loumkoski returned after about twenty minutes to tell a harrowing tale of the havoc wrought by the bombs that had fallen in the next street. A whole row of workmen’s dwellings had been blown down and many more were in flames through fires caused by the explosions. The fire-fighters and ambulance people were at work there so there was nothing she could do except—as she told them—render thanks to God that, whereas she had thought that He had cursed her all these years with barrenness she now knew that He had blessed her by preventing her from having any children of her own.
Gregory took out his wad of Finnish notes and peeling off three large ones said to her: “Madame, there is very little that we can do to help but I should be glad if you would take this money. It will buy you a railway-ticket to Sweden and keep you there for a few weeks without want, at least; and I’m sure that your husband would rather have you safely out of all these horrors than that you should risk your life to stay with him. If you’re lucky you may be able to get one of the trains leaving tomorrow morning.”
She shook her head. “It is mos’ kine of you, sir, but I not leave im at zis time, no, no.”
Her husband and the others all tried to persuade her to do so but she was quite adamant in her refusal. The best that they could do was to make her take the money to put aside so that when her husband was called up—which would mean separation for them in any case—she would then be able to use it to leave the country; which he said would be a great comfort to him while he was serving with his unit.
At a quarter to four they said good-bye to Madame Loumkoski and set off in the car again, back to the aerodrome. It was slow going, as the road was now crowded with an army of refugees who were pouring out of Helsinki to face the bitter cold of the woods rather than spend another night in what appeared to be a doomed city. It was quite dark when they reached the aerodrome and Gregory asked Loumkoski to drive them along a road at its side for about half a mile; then he signalled to him to halt and they all got out. Before taking leave of the friendly chauffeur Gregory asked him if he could spare a spanner with which request he willingly obliged, and they then parted from him with many expressions of goodwill on both sides.
Crossing a ditch Gregory’s party began to tramp through the thick snow of the open fields. After ten minutes’ laboured going they came up against a wire fence which they knew, from what they had seen in daylight, marked the boundary of the aerodrome. Slipping through it they ploughed on through the snow on its far side. In spite of the darkness they could see for quite a distance owing to the light which the snow reflected, but on this night of death and terror it was not the pale, white light normally reflected from snow, by which, it is said Confucius, as a boy, learned to read on winter evenings because he was too poor to buy candles. It was tinged with a sinister crimson from the blood-red glow shot with fiery orange that hung like a devil’s pall above the burning buildings of the city. The light had a horrid, eerie quality about it yet, as they advanced, it served to show them the line of the hangars in one of which the Sabina plane was housed.
At a muttered word from Gregory they made a slight detour in order to get round to the back of the hangars. He meant to approach them from the rear so that if there was a watchman about they could take him by surprise and overpower him before he had the chance to raise an alarm and bring the air-port police on the scene. Ten minutes later they had completed their slow, laborious trek and passing through a narrow corridor between two of the hangars came level with their fronts.
Gregory whispered to his companions to halt and peered out into the evil red twilight, first round one corner, then round the other. In normal times there would certainly have been a watchman on duty who would walk round the whole block of hangars at intervals, but they had seen nobody at the back of the row and there was nobody pacing up and down in front of it. There was quite enough light to see some way across the open, but the watchman might be crouching over some hidden brazier inside one of the hangars, and Gregory thought it best for them to wait where they were for a little, as if there was a watchman there he would almost certainly come out to have a look round from time to time.
It was very cold but with that crisp, dry cold which is exhilarating, and in their excitement at the prospect of getting safely away from Helsinki they did not particularly notice it; although they instinctively kept their faces buried deep in their big fur collars and stamped their feet every now and then.
After a quarter of an hour it seemed that they had been waiting there for an age and Gregory began to hope that, after all, there was no watchman on duty. The first day of war in Helsinki must have thrown all ordinary routine right out of gear. The watchman must have been wounded in an air-raid or called up for military service, and the people responsible for the safe-guarding of the hangars had quite possibly been so frantically busy on more urgent matters that they had had no time to replace him. At last Gregory decided to have a cautious look round and whispering to the others to remain where they were he slid out as noiselessly as a shadow along the front of the hangars.
Ten minutes later he returned to inform them cheerfully that he had examined every likely place and that quite definitely there was no watchman on duty. They followed him out into the open and along to the third hangar from the left-hand end of the row. The doors were padlocked but Gregory produced the heavy spanner he had begged of Loumkoski and in two swift wrenches tore the padlock away from its hinge; after which the double-doors slid smoothly back upon their grooves.
While Gregory shone his shaded torch Freddie climbed into the cockpit of the plane and gave the instrument-board a quick look over. To his joy he found that his orders on landing two days before had been carried out. The plane had been refuelled to capacity, so there seemed nothing to prevent them from making a direct flight to Stockholm. Between them they pushed the plane out of the shed on to the hard, frozen snow and while the two girls and Gregory stood by, Freddie spent five minutes examining the controls to see that they were all in order; then they turned the plane so that it should face the wind.
They had only just finished when Erika gave a gasp of dismay and tugged at Gregory’s shoulder. Swinging round he saw coming towards them, from the direction of the air-port buildings, a group of figures.
“Quick!” he shouted. “On board, all of you! Freddie, get her going!”
At the same instant one of the approaching group shouted something in Finnish and they all began to run.
Freddie was in the plane and Angela was scrambling up beside him but Erika and Gregory were still on the ground when the group of men came pounding up to them. One was in pilot’s kit; there were five others, armed police and air-port officials. Gregory realised that there was nothing for it but to turn and face them.
“Hullo! What’s the excitement?” he said in English.
“What do you do ’ere?” one of the air-port men replied in the same language.
“Getting out while the going’s good,” replied Gregory calmly.
“But you ’ave not pass the controls and ’ave no permit.”
“I’m not going to allow a little thing like that to stand in my way in times like these,” said Gregory. “Our passports are all in order and we’ve come straight from the British Consulate.”
“Yes, yes; per’aps. But you cannot take this plane.”
“Why not? It’s mine.”
The official shrugged. “All planes ’ave been commandeered under an emergency decree we make this morning.”
“You can’t commandeer this one!” Gregory retorted swiftly. “This plane is the property of the British Government.”
“I can,” replied the official abruptly. “As I ’ave told you, we ’ave powers to commandeer all planes under an emergency decree.”
&nb
sp; “But this is flagrant interference with the rights of neutrals.”
“That I cannot ’elp. Compensation will be pay to you for et but Finland makes war and every plane in Helsinki is needed.” The official glanced up at Freddie. “You, there—in the pilot’s seat—please to come down!”
Gregory could hardly contain his cold, fierce wrath. In another five minutes they would have been on their way out of Finland to Stockholm and perhaps twenty-four hours later safely home in England. Now they were stuck again with no means of getting out of the country. Worse still, by now the names of Freddie and himself had probably been circulated as those of men wanted for murder and at any moment the airport police might demand to see their passports.
For a second he played with the idea of putting up a fight. Freddie was still in the plane and had only to press the self-starter. Gregory would have risked being shot by drawing his own gun and leaping up into the cockpit, but he had the two girls to consider. In a shooting affray they might easily be wounded or killed and Erika was still standing beside him. Before they could both get up into the plane they would be dragged back. There were six Finns against Freddie and himself so the odds were much too heavy and he dismissed the idea as soon as it came to him.
Grimly he nodded to Freddie, who had been waiting for some sign from him whether to obey the order to get out or not. The airman reluctantly climbed down and Angela jumped out after him.
“There’s going to be trouble about this,” she announced sharply. “I’m Miss Fordyce, and my father is a special assistant to the British Consul here. He would have made other arrangements to get me to a place of safety if this gentleman had not offered to fly me home. If you detain me my father will make things jolly hot for you with your Government.”
Faked Passports Page 27
