‘Punishment.’
‘That’s better.’ Rurik reached out her hand without taking her stern gaze off the wretched girl for one instant. Elena handed over the knout, the black leather whip with its many thongs, telling herself that her lover had radically changed her political views since the Revolution, but not her aristocratic manners. She used the knout on her Amazons as readily as she had once used the whip on the peasants and serfs of her father’s sprawling country estates.
Slowly, almost as if she were enjoying the movement, she pulled back the cruel thongs of the little whip and thrust the thick black shaft through her curled white hand, drawing it back and then inserting it once more. ‘You shall receive six strokes of the knout for your failure this night. Is that understood, comrade?’
‘Yes,’ the girl quavered, eyeing the whip fearfully, as Captain Rurik thrust the shaft through her delicate white fingers yet again.
‘Horoscho. Then down with your breeches. At once!’ Rurik snapped fiercely so that the girl quivered.
Awkwardly the girl fumbled with her leather flying breeches and with a squeak of leather, lowered them. She bent reluctantly.
‘Up with your shirt tail!’ Rurik commanded, thrusting the shaft through her clenched hand once again.
In the fashion of Russian peasants, the girl wore no drawers. She drew up her shirt tail to reveal two white plump globes. Watching, Sergeant Markova saw the sight had the usual effect on her lover. Her beautiful face went somehow slack and out of focus. A greedy hard glint had appeared in her eyes.
Captain Rurik released her grip on the shaft. She allowed the black leather thongs to fall. ‘Prepare to accept your punishment,’ she ordered in a tight, harsh voice, as if suddenly she were having difficulty with her breathing, her gaze devouring the dimpled white, fleshy buttocks greedily.
She raised the knout. With a grunt she brought it down hard. The girl yelled with pain and suddenly a bright red weal appeared everywhere on the poor girl’s flesh.
Sergeant Markova turned away. There were some things she simply could not take from her aristocratic lover. Captain Rurik raised the whip again, her breath coming in short hard gasps. She was enjoying this…
* * *
At the other end of the Baltic, muffled in a thick fur overcoat with a woollen scarf tied around his head, Aronson sat at his desk under the naked bulb, staring at the wireless transcript. Outside it was just before dawn on a cold March morning and the great city was silent save for the rattle of the early morning trams and the harsh regular stamp of marching feet. Soldiers were marching through the city again.
Aronson frowned at the sound and forgot the transcript for a moment. There was trouble in Leningrad, in particular, in the workers’ and sailors’ suburb of Kronstadt. There the very workers and seamen who had started the revolution of 1917 were calling for counter-revolution. They were sick of the ‘communist Jews’ of Moscow, as they called them, running – and ruining – their lives. They wanted food, warmth and an end of the rampant inflation. Already a body of sailors had seized Fort Red and there was talk that the 70,000 sailors who were garrisoned in the area were setting up something called ‘The Revolutionary Government of Fifteen’.
Only yesterday a mob of angry sailors, still wearing the uniform of the Red Fleet, had marched down the Neva Prospekt, crying: ‘Look around you, comrades, at the filth we’ve got ourselves into! All because of a handful of so-called communists. But they are not real communists. They are feathering their nests in Moscow. We’ve got to get rid of these false communists. They incite the workers to hate the peasant. And incite the peasants to hate the workers. Let’s get rid of the scum!’ In the end the soldiers, now being rushed to the city by a worried Trotsky from the front, had fired over their heads and they had gone back to Kronstadt. But the peace wouldn’t last much longer. There was serious trouble brewing in Kronstadt.
Aronson sighed and told himself Russia was a terrible country. Sometimes he thought it was ungovernable. But then he restrained himself severely and told himself that wouldn’t do. Mother Russia had survived so much in the past and it would survive the communists and their excesses. All it needed was more reasonable men like himself who didn’t do or say the first damned thing that came into their minds. He sighed again and bent over the transcript, before turning the map of the Baltic which lay next to it on the big bare desk.
The reconnaissance plane had marked the little convoy as being south-east of the Danish island, Bornholm. Then the ships had been at anchor, but he assumed that they would have now sailed. Good. So which way would they proceed?
‘Not due south, that is certain,’ he said aloud, talking to himself in the fashion of lonely men. That would bring the convoy too close to German coastal waters and whatever dangers the English thought lay there for them.
He frowned and stared at the Eastern Baltic coast on the map. In 1915 he had been an agent in that area himself. It had been his assignment, and those who worked for him, to discover which harbours were being used by Hindenburg’s army for supplying the Fritz troops retreating through East Prussia before the advancing Imperial Russian Army. The Russian Army’s invasion had failed but he had remained behind a while and investigated those German ports and harbours which were now Polish since Versailles: all the way from Danzig down to Stettin.
Now he put himself in the position of the English trying to run in weapons through a Polish port. They needed time and security, somewhere not too far from where the Polish forces in Silesia were concentrated, but also secure from any attempt on the part of the Fritzes to raid the port. Then, unloading the weapons would take time.
He stared at the map. Outside he could hear the faint high-pitched burr of a machine gun being fired like the tap-tap of an angry woodpecker. The sailors in Kronstadt again, he told himself. The thought of the enemy within spurred him to make a decision. Stettin was no good. It was too close to the Fritzes. Danzig was out, too. The Fritzes could easily raid it from their bases just over the water in East Prussia. The port of entry had to be between those. He took up a ruler and a lead pencil and drew a line from each of the ports between Stettin and Danzig to Oppeln, the capital of Upper Silesia, then measured the distances.
In a matter of minutes he had it. The closest port to the Upper Silesian capital was Kolberg, or Kolobrzeg, and a direct road led from there to Oppeln. He sat back, elated, but at the same time feeling very weary. It had to be Kolberg, but what if he were wrong? There would be no time to redirect that aristocratic lesbian and her Red Amazons to somewhere else if he had come to the wrong conclusion.
Outside another battalion of Red Guards marched by in the direction of Kronstadt, their steel-tipped boots slamming onto the cobbles, singing lustily as they went to fight their brothers in the seamen’s suburb. Periodically they yelled ‘Slava Krasnaya Armya!’ – Long Live the Red Army!
He listened to their song, which ended in the resounding chorus,
‘A cuckoo in the forest
Counts the Years we have to live.
And a well-aimed leaden bullet
Cuts short our years of life…’
The sad but brave words of those good Russian boys, who would die sooner or later for a Mother Russia which had given them nothing but war and bloodshed, made his decision for him. It had to be Kolberg. It would be! He picked up the telephone and whirled the handle swiftly.
‘Yes, comrade?’ the operator’s weary voice came over the line.
‘Quick. Top priority. I want to send a wire. Come on now… davoi!’
Three
‘Poland,’ Chris announced proudly as she stood on the bridge, the wind rippling in her hair. ‘My beloved country.’
Next to her Dickie grinned cheekily and said pompously, ‘And the celebrated home of that splendid tipple – vodka.’
She grinned, too.
Smith looked at the sea and the faint brown smudge on the horizon. The sea was its normal grey-green dreary self again. There was the usual dawn chill wind bl
owing which no coat could protect you from and made a person long for the warmth of the wardroom and a nice hot cup of tea.
Today would be the end of their voyage. At this speed they would reach the port by mid-afternoon. After that there would be the unloading of the fishing smacks. During that period he’d give the chaps shore leave, allow them to stretch their legs and have a look at the place. Naturally he’d have to give them the usual warning about the dangers of drink and loose women. Not that it had much effect. Then they would sail again and he’d never see Chris again.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes as she chatted animatedly to Dickie and felt a kind of yearning. He couldn’t find another word to describe his feelings. He longed for her and told himself it was unfair that he couldn’t have her. Yet he knew, deep down in his heart, he couldn’t. They had been thrown together for a short time and now they must part. That was it. As Ginger Kerrigan would say with a knowing wink and nudge, ‘Trick for yer average matelot is to get yer oar in and then off as fast as yer can row.’ Smith tugged his nose ruefully and told himself he had not even had his ‘oar’ in.
‘Sir.’
He turned, startled. It was CPO Ferguson. Smith was slightly amused to see Sandy had changed his dirty overalls for a pair of sparkling white ones. Obviously he wanted to impress when they ran into the little Polish port.
‘What is it, Chiefie?’
‘No ay serious, ye ken,’ Sandy replied in that broad Scots accent of his, ‘but we runnin’ low on fuel. We mun fill the tanks in yon foreign place afore we sail. We’ll nay make it back to Texel if we dinna.’
Smith had completely forgotten about the fuel position with all the excitement of the last forty-eight hours. He said, ‘Of course, Chiefie, I’m glad you reminded me. I’ll get straight on to it once we heave to.’ He looked at the sandy-haired old Chief Petty Officer’s overalls; they’d even been starched. ‘You going ashore yourself, Chief?’ he asked with a smile. ‘I can see you’ve got your best togs on.’
‘Ay, I have a mind to, sir,’ Sandy replied dourly. ‘I dinna like these foreign parts much, as ye well ken. But it’s no doubt ma duty to show them that the Royal’s here.’
‘Of course, of course. And you’ll undoubtedly be enjoying a little tipple of that vodka stuff.’
Sandy Ferguson nodded, ‘Ay I might partake o’ a wee dram.’
Smith smiled and told himself that irony was wasted on the Scot. If he knew anything of the old petty officer, he’d have several ‘wee drams’. For the strong waters were his only weakness. ‘All right, Chiefie, leave the oil business to me.’
The CPO gave the skipper a rigid salute for he still couldn’t get used to the business of playing civilian. Instinctively Smith returned it and as Ferguson disappeared down below again to his engines, he turnedthe other two. ‘Chris,’ he said, ‘two questions.’
‘Yes.’ She was serious immediately.
‘One. What is the drill for unloading the fishing smacks? Two, is there the possibility of obtaining fuel for the Swordfish at the port?’
‘They say we Poles are a haphazard, unorganised people,’ she began, and Smith groaned inwardly. ‘Here we go again,’ he told himself, always Poland and the Poles. ‘But we have made provision for both these matters. My father has a fleet of lorries waiting to transport the arms at once to the Annaberg. Two, once we knew from London that you were being sent to aid us, our people procured the fuel you need on the black market. It is very precious in Poland, you see.’ She stopped and looked at him a little wistfully. ‘Enough to take you back to your England.’ For a moment there was the glint of tears in her beautiful eyes and Smith felt his heart leap a little.
Next to him, Dickie chortled, ‘England, home and beauty, what. Catch the next choo-choo to London and then we’ll see, eh?’ He gave what he thought was a naughty wink.
Chris said, ‘You Englishmen, always the fun first.’
Smith sniffed and said nothing. Instead he flung up his glasses and surveyed the sea ahead. After all, he told himself, they weren’t ‘home and dry’ yet, as Dickie would undoubtedly have put it.
By midday they could see the coast and the port clearly enough. Through his glasses, Smith could see long stretches of white sandy beaches to either side of a small port, lined with eighteenth-century brick-and-timber houses in the fashion of those built along the German-held Baltic. It was obvious that although it was Polish, the old Kolberg had been a typically North German city. Of course, he told himself, as he lowered his glass, he wouldn’t have dared tell Chris that, would he?
Time passed. The little convoy, the fishing smacks trailing thick black coal smoke behind them, plodded on steadily, getting ever closer to their homeland. Chris gripped the rail and stared steadily at the coastline, as if willing the Swordfish to reach Poland as soon as possible, occasionally turning and calling out the name of some landmark or building which she had spotted. She had just gushed about the great cathedral of St Maria, whose green steeple was quite clear now, when Billy Bennett, who was posted as stern lookout, cried urgently, ‘Aircraft… aircraft to starboard, sir!’
Dickie and Smith turned round. ‘Can you identify them, Billy?’ Smith called, as Bennett stared at the black dots with his binoculars.
‘No sir. Not yet.’
So the two of them raised their binoculars and stared at the oncoming aircraft. There were three of them, flying in formation, at perhaps eighty miles an hour, Smith estimated. Obviously not the fastest aircraft in the world. He lowered his glasses for a moment and asked Chris, ‘Has the Polish Army got aeroplanes?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But not in this area I think. Our planes will be on the Eastern Front fighting the Russians.’
Smith absorbed the information and stared through his glasses again, telling himself that if these planes came from von der Goltz’s Iron Division, they surely wouldn’t have been flying in from this direction. The German troops lay to the west; these planes were coming in from the east.
Dickie cursed and said urgently, ‘They’re seaplanes, Smithie.’
Smith remembered the one that had attempted to photograph them off Bornholm and blurted out, ‘Not now when we’re almost there!’
‘No doubt about it, sir,’ Bennett confirmed Dickie’s identification. ‘Them’s seaplanes all right, sir – and I think I can see bombs under their wings.’
Smith waited no longer. He pressed the alarm button. The klaxon blurted out its urgent warning. ‘Action stations!’ Dickie cried and grabbed for his steel helmet which hung from a nail outside the bridge. ‘Action stations!’
Smith’s veterans did not need to be ordered what to do. This sort of thing had been routine to them for years. Rushing into their duffel coats and slapping on their steel helmets they doubled to their posts. While Dickie took control of the bridge, Ginger Kerrigan sprang up on to the monkey island and grabbed hold of his twin Lewis guns. Jerking back the cocking handle, he swung them to face the oncoming planes. As fat as he was, Billy Bennett did the same with just as much speed.
Smith nodded to Dickie. He needed to say no more. They both had been with convoys under air attack before. The trick was to get the convoy to disperse as quickly as possible so that the ships didn’t present an easy target for the bombers. Swiftly Smith explained this to Chris and told her what to say as the Swordfish flashed by each fishing smack.
Now the fishing smacks were beginning to spread as the seaplanes came closer and closer, with those which could steam faster than the five knots of the slowest vessel in the convoy raising their speeds. Satisfied that he had done as much as he could in that area, Smith yelled, ‘All right, Dickie, full ahead! Let’s go and tackle the devils.’
‘Righto,’ Dickie yelled as the Swordfish shot forwards. ‘Up the revolution, chaps!’ And with that the long lean craft shot forwards, heading straight towards their enemies…
* * *
Captain Rurik’s eyes glistened with excitement behind the big square goggles. Next to her in
the observer’s seat, Elena craned her neck to gaze at the green-grey sea below. They had already spotted that the convoy was dispersing and realised that they had been seen and identified, too.
Rurik leaned over and shouted above the deafening roar of the engines. ‘Indicate that we should disperse… Now.’
Elena nodded her understanding. She opened the side flap. An icy wind penetrated the cabin, as she leaned out her leather-helmeted head, the signal flags in her gauntleted hand. Only Rurik’s plane had a radio and that was linked with the tender which was their base. Swiftly Elena began to wag the little red and green flags at the two other planes which were flying some two hundred metres away from Rurik’s seaplane.
In each the observer nodded her understanding and the planes began to move apart, dropping slowly to select their now widely spread targets.
Rurik glanced down. A swift V of white was drawing away from the rest of the little fishing smacks, narrowing the distance between the ships and the planes. ‘The English gentleman,’ she yelled at her companion and pointed her gloved hand downwards. Her face twisted into a sneer beneath her helmet. ‘The gallant Saint George come to do battle with the dragon, eh? Boshe moi! Let us give him a taste of the dragon’s fire!’
Captain Rurik pushed the throttle forward. The seaplane’s nose dipped sharply. They started to come down. The little craft loomed ever larger. Now Rurik could make out the superstructure of a naval craft – the wireless mast, machine guns, quick-firer. She had guessed right. This was the English escort that Aronson, the Jew, had told her about.
‘Prepare the bomb-aimer,’ she yelled above the roar of the twin engines. ‘We’ll bomb at my signal.’
Elena nodded her understanding. Awkwardly she clambered out of her seat and went down the fuselage, bent, as if she were climbing a mountain to where the bomb-aimer, a chubby blonde who was once ‘a specialised whore’ in Moscow before Captain Rurik had recruited her, lay full length on the deck staring down at the scudding sea below through a long glass panel.
The Baltic Run Page 17