by Simon Boxall
They walked for what seemed like hours but, in reality, it was only forty five minutes. Her back was giving out a little pain. It was time that they took a break. The kids, Pyotr and Anna, were fantastic as always, they were so kind to her. She thought back to what Georgii had said; yes it made sense in Georgii Radetzky's logic to go back and see who this unexplained personage was, but, as this person had not made a move against them, why should they now? Let's face it, she thought, this shadow, had plenty of opportunities and had plenty of time to make their move. Why challenge them now, when freedom was just over the brow of the hill, and a little bit further on ... Why?
Besides, Yulia knew who he was, she had known all along, but Georgii was never going to find that out. She leant back and manoeuvred her body into a comfortable position and thought about the long journey that had brought her to this forest clearing ...
There was no question of doubt here. Her parents had been, and still were as far as she knew English. They`d never said much about their respective families. Her childhood had been spent travelling around the world. One minute, the family was sweating it out in India, the next, they endured frozen winters in Vladivostok. Father was a junior consular official.
When she was eight years old, she had been packed off to live with an aunt in Lymington in Hampshire. Lymington was fine, the aunt was not. Soon after her arrival Julia, and Julia was her real name, had been sent to study at the prestigious Wentworth school in Bournemouth.
Her studies had gone well, infact, in another time and place, she would have been singled out by the Head Teacher for greater things. But this was the England of Edward the Seventh and in society a woman had to know her place. Progressive ideas were for others, at Wentworth she was being steadily groomed in her role, as her mother liked to say, 'Marriage fodder'.
But Julia Kilduff had other ideas, 'Marriage fodder' she might be, but she was going to do it on her own terms. As a young child, on her travels with her family, she had seen there was a great big world that lay beyond the horizon of Poole bay. It was a world that contained a thousand different cultures, languages and peoples. Travel had given her a taste for exploration and, on their stays in one place or another, she had developed and, indeed, built upon a natural gift for picking up the 'Mother tongues' of whichever country she happened to be staying in at any one particular time.
So summer holidays were either spent in New Street, Lymington, or, as previously mentioned, in the darkest parts of Africa, or trekking through the Hindu Kush, or making friends with Chinese looking street urchins in the shanty towns in and around Port Arthur and Vladivostok. Whereas 'Pa, pa's' labours had, by and large, gone unnoticed in the Consular service, his daughter's had not. By her teens, she had grown into a tall, willowy adolescent. When on holiday, she had brightened up her parent's life no end in many of the out of the way, fly and flea ridden corners of that rapidly fading imperialistic world.
All those that came to dine at the Kilduff's table were mightily impressed by their daughter and her special 'Gift', at short notice, for picking up languages. Whilst they forgot the 'Crusty' parents, they tended to remember the Kilduff's charming daughter. One such visitor to the Kilduff table was so overawed by Julia's intellect, that he made a mental note of her abilities. By his reckoning, the world was changing so fast, most people had not cottoned onto this fact yet, but the Kilduff's daughter had.
Her words, and these caught the visitor by 'The shirt tail', were, Emperor Franz Joseph might not endorse change, but the 'Bolshevik' Lenin does. You mark my words! If there is a war in the future, as the pundits are always saying ... that man Lenin will hold all of the cards!'
'Why do you say that,' the visitor enquired.
Julia replied. 'Talleyrand, during the French revolution said, 'It's not kings or queens that you need to worry about; it is the idle ignorant masses. Because, if they knew the value of the power in their hands and actually had the audacity to use it', then Sir, the world would be quite a different place! I have read their writings on capitalism. It is clear to me that the leader of the Bolshevik faction understands this also! Given the opportunity, for example, to initiate the collapse of the 'Ancien Regime', he would not hesitate to mobilise the people and wake up the sleeping tiger!'
'And what would precipitate this change,' the dinner guest said.
'A war,' she replied. Yulia paused as she helped her mother collect up the crockery and then carried on, 'A war with such horrific consequences, it will leave those of the 'Old Order that manage to survive it, on the very edge of a steep precipice!'
The dinner guest was shocked and yet could not deny that he was also, at the same time, very impressed by Julia's reasoning and her words stayed with him for a long time after. He felt it was always good to converse with someone bright young and intelligent, whom, like himself had also recognised the shift away from 'The Old', towards the world of, the 'New Order'. Whilst there would always be a need for 'Swash-buckling', young 'Bravos'; there was also a growing need for resourceful young operatives like Yulia, especially, when it came to working 'In the Field'. No doubt about it, the visitor thought, the world was changing and changing fast and, unlike Franz Joseph, you had to change with it or get left behind, the visitor thought.
By the summer of nineteen fourteen, Julia Kilduff was up at Newnham College reading 'Ancient History'. She could also speak fluent Mandarin; Russian; French; Italian; Spanish and German. No mean achievement for a young girl of twenty deemed by her elders to be only 'Marriage fodder'.
With her uncanny knack of picking up languages, at 'the drop of a hat', the dinner guest dusted off his notebook and decided to take a little trip up to Cambridge. That was on the twenty seventh of June nineteen fourteen. The next day an event in the Balkans would set a chain of events in motion that would shock the European World out of its 'Post Victorian' slumbers!
Julia could see that this colonel was not like the others. In fact she could see that this man was not offering her his hand in marriage, he was offering her a 'Way out'. It was still, no matter what 'The Suffragettes' said, there was not much of a future for a girl like her in academia. So Julia Kilduff signed on the dotted line and took it, then she went the following week, to work for 'The Ministry'. She could not have arrived at a better time, for war with Germany was literally just around the corner.
So Agent Number 3 she became, Julia never found out who the other two were, was sent to Gosport for three weeks training and then returned to London to await further instructions. They were not long in coming.
In early September she was dispatched to Rome. En-route she had passed through Paris and had been there during the panic that preceded the first battle of the Marne. From there, Julia Kilduff had travelled on to Marseille and by ship to Naples. From there she went directly to Rome.
Her brief was quite simply this. Gauge the feeling of the Italian nation. Were they in a mood to fight on the side of 'The Central Powers', or, was there a chance that they might come over and fight for 'The Allies'? If they did, what was going to be the asking price? It was well known in diplomatic circles, indeed it was an open secret, that the Italian government was playing both sides off against each other. It was also known by 'Strategic Planners' in Whitehall, which indicated in those early days of the war, that the Austro Hungarian Empire was by no means in a strong position to strike up a bargain. If they were seen to give in over Trieste then the other minorities, within that multi faceted empire, might start flexing their muscles.
Julia, sounded out all of the main 'Central Powers' players on the embassy circuit, to which she was always invited and, managed to supply her boss with the 'Solid Gold' information he sought. He, in turn, passed on Kilduff's reports to the Foreign Office. Early in nineteen fifteen a firm offer was made to the Italians over Trieste. Whilst 'The Central Powers', had dithered, even though it later had transpired that the Italians would have preferred to have done business with them. Yulia's information, had given 'The Allies' the edge and had enabled them
to pip, 'The Central Powers', to the post.
From Rome, Julia Kilduff was recalled to London. Her boss was pleased with her on two counts. First, his hunch about her at the dinner table was confirmed and, secondly, he now had an extremely resourceful agent working for him. As well he knew, agents like her were almost impossible to find.
But still her controller's mind reflected back on to that first meeting. Julia had said something at that dinner; what was it? He thought long and hard. Aah yes, it was the Talleyrand comment about the people being the main threat to stability and order. Yes, waking the 'Sleeping Giant!' He called over to his secretary and asked her to pencil in Miss Kilduff for an appointment.
At the meeting he had asked Julia to elaborate on the comments that she had made at that meal. To Julia's credit she did her best to explain to her controller the rationale behind her thinking. When she had finished and, after he had walked her over to the door of his office, her boss sat down and thought again about what she had said. There was no doubt about it that this girl had a very fine mind.
As far as he knew nobody had considered what might happen if the workers refused to manufacture goods and soldiers refused to fight. From Kilduff's analysis two countries seemed to be priming themselves for revolution. The Russian, and Austro Hungarian empires; but in the Whitehall village of nineteen fifteen, nobody really wanted to hear such talk, especially when it concerned a 'much' valued ally, and everybody seemed to be missing out on the opportunity to strike at the weak underbelly of the 'Central Powers'. Maybe Julia and her controller; were simply getting ahead of themselves, they would simply have to wait until everybody else caught up. In the meantime there was a war to fight!
By mid nineteen sixteen Julia Kilduff had been recalled from a tour of duty in Holland. Posing as an American widower, she had provided the allies with much needed information on 'Blockade' runners. It had been a long tour and the feeling of her controller was that prolonged activity would expose his much valued, asset. So he recalled her, there was also something else playing on his mind.
Yulia was going to be sent to St Petersburg, now called Petrograd. The political situation in Russia was beginning to change. Alarming reports had been coming in to London that the German 'High Command' had been trying to woo Vladimir Illyvich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Party. Overcoming initial resistance, especially from the Russians, they had seen the value of the Central Powers' proposition; so had London. If they were successful in this, the scales of war would easily be tipped in their favour; the war would be lost if the Germans moved their armies in the east over to the west. This could not be allowed to happen. There was a feeling of helplessness in London but, in the world of espionage, Julia's controller recognised that Russia was going to be the place where the next move was going to be made. So with not much of a brief, only to keep the information flowing, his much valued agent was dispatched, by way of Sweden, to the Russian Empire.
This time she was going to be an Estonian school teacher from Narva. Her 'Legend' had been left deliberately vague; the idea had been that she could develop it as she went along. But there were certain key points from which Julia Kilduff, now Yulia Klimtsov, could not stray. The first was that both her parents had died. The father had been a Russian sea captain and the mother a native Estonian had been a school teacher in Narva. Her mother had died, during the summer of nineteen sixteen of a combination of the sweating sickness and malnutrition, Yulia, after arranging for payment of her mother's medical bills with what little monies were left, had gone to look for work in the Russian capital. To ready-herself for this, Julia's controller had sent her to prepare at the 'Russian School', in London for three months.
Shortly after her arrival in Petrograd, Yulia got a job as a teacher in a small independent girls school just off Zagorodny Prospekt and had a rented a room from an old widower, in an apartment block between St Isaacs Cathedral and the Central Post Office. The location of which would bode well for her in the future. As well she knew this would bring her into contact with like-minded liberals and others from across the political divide and in this she was later to be proved right.
Her main contact, in the Petrograd of nineteen sixteen, was none other than one Sidney Reilly. The arrangement was that chalk marks would appear in certain locations across the city, when either had something they wanted to tell the other. So it really came as no surprise to the inhabitants of Petrograd, those that could be bothered to scan every inch of wall space, to see, every now and then, upside down squiggles chalked upon the sides of certain city fortifications.
Events moved fast in Petrograd and Moscow. But, of all the places she found herself to be in, for Julia it was in the microcosm of the classroom that Yulia was able to gauge and study the mood of the Russian people before, during and after the revolutions of nineteen seventeen. Providence was again to play its hand here, as it was to do on many an occasion in Julia's chosen career of secret agent.
Petrograd of the late summer of nineteen sixteen was a curious place. The Tsar was away at the front, trying to run the war and the Tsarina had been left in charge of domestic affairs. Both were unsuitable for matters of state; but both, whether they were aware of their personal shortcomings, and out of their ill conceived senses of loyalty and duty and the jumble of meaningless, Coronation oaths, tried to deal with the everyday running of the failing Autocratic State. But when it came, it was a combination of bad advice and ministerial leapfrogging that caused the ailing, Tsarist state to collapse. Julia now found herself in exactly the right place at the right time. She was there to see her dinner prediction come true.
When he was around, her contact Sidney Reilly had proved most helpful in furnishing her with contacts; but there were long periods when he would simply disappear. Looking back on it now, Julia remembered that her 'Controller', had pointed out that, at no time was she to make contact with the British embassy. The brief and the legend were deliberately left vague in this respect. One thing he did say was that he wanted her to be his eyes and ears and he also wanted her to keep a firm eye on Reilly. He had said to her that he could be trusted most of the time but he suspected, and these were exact words, 'that he might swing both ways'. He later had to explain these words to Julia; she was bright in most areas, but not that bright!
As summer passed to autumn Julia taught French, English and needlework to the daughters of the elite's but she also noticed the ever-changing mood at the fee paying girl's school and further on she saw what was happening in the world beyond the schools French windows. In those months Julia watched the mood of the city change, especially at the beginning of the day during morning registration and at the end of the afternoon after the quiet period of reflection and light reading. Whilst the girls waited in her classroom to be dismissed, Julia could hear the voices of their parents, spoken through their children, start to assert them-selves in the classroom.
'My father says that, The Autocracy will never fall,' one girl said.
Another replied waving a pamphlet up in the air,' The 'Mad Monk' Rasputin fornicates with the Empress Alexandra!'
At that point and completely in character, Julia grabbed the impudent girl by the arm and dragged the girl by the pigtail to see the headmistress.
The 'Head', after the girl's father had picked up his distraught daughter, confided in Yulia that this was not the first instance of such behaviour of this kind, in her school. Even on the street, pamphleteers were openly giving out this smut involving the Tsarina and the 'Mujik' of 'Holy Orders'. A year before, nay six months previous, an outburst of this nature would have been quite unthinkable. Now it was all too frequent.
On another occasion Julia witnessed the girls saying. 'My Uncle Isaac says that only 'Constitutional Monarchy', along the English lines, can cure the ills of the nation!!'
A little church mouse of a girl who, even at morning registration time, always had her head buried in a book replied. 'The ills of this nation are such that nothing short of a revolution can save the day!'
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'But why does the Tsar have to go off and play with his tin soldiers, whilst the nation starves? Last night, on my way home, there were workers standing on street corners shouting horrible things as we passed!'
'How can you resuscitate an already dead corpse? It's not possible; Russia is already dead! Bury it in the ground now ... cover it over with dirt and maybe something good will come of it,' the Church mouse said.
Maybe in seventy or eighty year's time, Julia thought. By the Christmas of nineteen sixteen going on seventeen, Julia felt as though she had lived in the city for years. Since her arrival, Julia had frantically networked. Evenings were spent going to public meetings in halls people's houses and out on the streets. Sidney Reilly would suddenly turn up, so she would debrief and then he would disappear as quickly as he had appeared.
But events rapidly took over; reports from the front indicated, and these were the reports of the pamphleteers, that the army was on the brink of collapse; the more literate of them, implied that it was nineteen hundred and five all over again. It was the Russian people's destiny, no duty; it was a matter of historical importance, and it was an imperative duty, not to miss out on this opportunity a second time. The time had come, and the time was right for change. And indeed it had!
In Julia Kilduff's mind the hand of fate was doing its damndest, and was succeeding brilliantly, in undermining the 'Old Regime'. There was no bread in Petrograd; the Autocracy was in a state of permanent paralysis, unable, seemingly, to make a decision. One leaflet summed it up and Julia immediately saw the comical side:
Memo from: Trepov & Golitsyn.
Shall we do this, shall we do that; shall we do this? I'm worn out!!!