After this, people filed quietly up to the table. The mood of the meeting had changed completely. People were wringing Tom’s hand, as well they might, we thought.
Two days before we left I went round to Intourist to collect our tickets and was met with a blank refusal. The new Russian staff were uncooperative and surly.
‘You ask for first-class accommodation in Moscow and third-class in Vladivostok. Why?’
‘Because ... hotels are very expensive. We haven’t got a lot of money.’ I hoped that this non-capitalist approach might soften the official a little, and I couldn’t give the true reason. Too late I realized that it might have been wiser to pay the higher price.
‘In any case, you can’t have the tickets.’
It appeared that these could not be issued without a countersignature from Commissar Agranov of the NKVD, and the commissar had already left his office. Next day was the Soviet Day of Rest and offices would be closed. If the reservations were not taken up at once we should lose them, and our applications would become null and void. It was doubtful whether the Russians would allow us to make another attempt and in any case, the money we had paid over would be lost, and we had no more. The Sealed Fund was almost used up and would only serve to liquidate last-minute expenses.
‘Where does the commissar live?’ I asked. I was almost in tears. Without answering, the man turned on his heel and disappeared into his office.
‘Marijas iela 52, down by the station. Take these.’ The girl clerk thrust a bundle of forms into my hand and bent over her typewriter. I hurried out. A tired-looking woman opened the door of the commissar’s flat. .
‘Is Commissar Agranov at home? May I have a word with him?’ Through the half-open door of the dining room I could see two children playing in the corner and a man in shirt sleeves sitting at the table. A uniform jacket hung over the chair. The woman gave an uneasy glance at the broad back.
‘What is it?’ tne commissar called. ‘Send her in.’
I explained in my halting Russian our dilemma. ‘We’ve been told to leave. We want to leave’. We must catch the train ... All we need is your signature. Please. ‘
He held out his hand for the papers and looked them through with agonizing slowness. The two children had stopped playing and were crowding to the table. The smaller one climbed up on his knee.
‘I have two young boys at home ...’ I ventured.
Without speaking, the commissar drew a massive brass inkwell towards him and scrawled his signature on each form.
‘Spassibo. Oh, thank you,’ I said.
He nodded gravely and I hurried away.
We now had just two problems to settle. We must devise a code for Our Friend, who had volunteered to send messages to London using the wireless set which had been hidden, for possible emergency use, in his nat, and we must dispose of the weapons lying in the safe.
The code would have to be based on books which might be found in any home in Riga. We decided on the standard Brockhaus German dictionary, as our friend spoke no English and his messages would have to be transmitted in German. They would consist of five-figure groups, the first three digits of which would give the page from which a word had been taken, page seven for example being shown as 007, page 25 as 025 and pages from 100 onwards being given entire. The last two digits would show the position of the word, counting from the left hand top corner of each page of the dictionary.
German is a ponderous language and for a time we were at a loss how to simplify it, until we hit on the device of putting all verbs in the infinitive, prefixing them with a standard group, 81111 to indicate the past tense and 82222 to show the future (Brockhaus page numbering stopped at 727). A noun would be modified by a preceding 91111 if it was to be plural.
Having ciphered the message in this way, Our Friend would recipher it using the Riga telephone book with its five-figure numbers. Copies of the local telephone book had been sent to London as a matter of routine.
Our Friend was delighted with the code, and we found on our return to England that messages had come through, though soon there was silence.
The disposal of our armoury presented a different type of problem. This consisted of a Webley & Scott .45 automatic and a Colt .22 with fifty rounds of ammunition each. The discovery of these, even after we had left the office, might lead to trouble. After a careful recce of the surrounding neighbourhood we decided that our best chance lay in dropping the guns into the Canal, provided we could shake our ‘shadow’. Fortunately, we had now been demoted to a single escort, and from time to time he would vanish for a moment or two from the bench, perhaps to snatch a bite of food or a drink, or for some other vital purpose, but his absences were unpredictable.
The Canal was crossed by a small bridge almost opposite the office. Kenneth had an old trench coat, the pockets of which opened on the inside and were accessible through a slit from without. There was a chill in the air now as dusk was falling, and the coat would not attract attention. We could see from the window of the Consulate if the ‘shadow’ left his post. As soon as this happened, we sauntered out and into the gardens, Kenneth with his hands in his pockets. As we crossed the bridge we stopped for a moment and leant on the rail. With a gentle splash the two guns slipped into the water.
The streets of Riga were provided with plentiful drains to take off the snow water and their grids were fitted with widely spaced bars. As we walked along the Elizabetes iela towards the flat we dropped a few bullets onto each grid, being careful to kick any strays down into the drain.
The train left for Moscow at 6.30 p.m. the next day, and this was our last evening in Riga. Before closing the office we had telegraphed to London to say that we were burning our codes at twelve noon the following day. After this, all communication with Head Office would be cut.
Chapter 20
Next morning we unlocked the office for the last time and sat uneasily in Nick’s room while the hands of our watches moved towards twelve o’clock. The die was cast, as our escape route could not be altered, but it would be comforting to know that if London had not approved our plans, they had at least not issued contrary orders.
A fire was burning in the stove. The code books and reciphering tables lay on the desk. Twelve o’clock struck. We were silent. There was something terribly final about severing the umbilical cord.
At this moment Glyn Hall came in with a telegram.
‘I suppose we’d better decipher it,’ said Nick.
Word by word the message emerged. ‘Head of station to proceed with Corrie to Stockholm. Bentons to go forthwith to Helsinki.’ The telegram had come too late. Tearing up the thick code books so that they would burn more easily we put them, together with the telegram, on the fire and watched while they slowly charred and crumbled.
Through the good offices of Our Friend’s brother we contacted one of the few Latvian customs officials who had not yet been replaced by a Russian and he agreed that if we could get our luggage to the station during a quiet period in the afternoon, he would ‘examine’ it and seal it up. FIX and FAX would wait at the customs shed and stow the luggage as soon as the train came in.
That evening we joined the surging crowd at the Moscow Station. A carriage had been reserved for us not, we felt, from courtesy but in order to make sure that we kept ourselves to ourselves.
As the train drew out of the suburbs the sun was setting over the White Lake. Then darkness fell.
Chapter 21
We sat disconsolate as the train clanged on through a black void pierced only by occasional lights. The carriage was dirty, the windows grimed. This was Russian rolling stock, part of the compulsory exchange deal with Latvia.
Now we were experiencing the pangs of the refugee that we had so often vicariously felt. We too had lost our roots and were being blown like tumbleweed across the vast expanse of Russia. All that remained of our home was stacked in the racks above our heads. There has been no news of the boys for over three weeks.
We had no idea whether they had arrived safely in America or even if they had left Eardisley. Ships were being sunk in the Atlantic, and in England the docks were on fire.
Over twenty-two thousand miles of the journey home lay before us and we were uncertain whether the Russians would allow us to leave the country or whether they would play at cat-and-mouse, arresting us as we were about to leave the Soviet Union.
This they had done to the unfortunate Polish Second Secretary, just as he was stepping into the ‘plane, seen off by the remnants of the diplomatic corps in Riga. During the thirteen days still to go until we reached Vladivostok some adverse discovery by the Russians might seal our fate. Perhaps Our Friend would be picked up with his radio transmitter and his codes, and under pressure he might reveal his connection with us. The light in the carriage was too dim for reading. We sat silent.
Towards midnight the train drew up at an empty station—Bigosovsk—the former frontier with Russia. Lights shone from a large wooden shed at the far end of the platform. The door of our carriage was flung open. A police official pointed to the platform. ‘You must get out,’ he said. Our luggage was bundled out after us.
‘Is this the end of the line for us already?’ muttered Nick.
Co Froebelius was talking to one of the police. ‘No, it’s just a customs examination.’
‘But why here? Latvia is part of the Soviet Union now,’ I protested. ‘Are you sure they’re not arresting us?’
‘No, look ...’
To our relief, other people were climbing down onto the platform. The customs shed was filled with anxious passengers, their possessions dumped down indiscriminately. Any luggage without the customs inspector’s chalk mark would be left behind, and it was up to us to make sure that ours was examined.
Our crate of drink was opened eagerly by a square-jawed customs official. On top were the remains of our picnic supper, a couple of sandwiches which she quickly slipped under the counter, and some tomatoes. She grabbed these and disappeared. The crowd was thinning as the passengers, their examination completed, drifted back towards the train, which lay immobilized on the rails, the engine breathing heavily and emitting strange noises like an animal asleep.
The woman returned with a more senior official. ‘These tomatoes will be confiscated,’ he announced.
‘Nichevo,’ we replied. It didn’t matter to us. Anything to get on with the examination and back into the train.
‘You must have a receipt,’ said the woman doggedly. Again she went away. The shed was empty now, and the chilly fear was growing that we might be left behind. All our luggage was unlocked and wide open, spread out on the ample counter.
‘Please can you look at our things,’ we begged. The customs official started to churn through our carefully-packed cases while we struggled to close the lids after him.
‘What is this?’ he asked, picking up a Snakes and Ladders board, part of our defence against boredom during the journey.
‘A game,’ we said.
‘And this?’ He was looking suspiciously at Word Making and Word Taking—a forerunner of Scrabble which we had found at the Hobsons’ flat.
‘A game too.’
‘Only one game,’ he said, sweeping the rest under the counter. ‘You can keep the playing cards.’ Unaccountably, he overlooked Murray’s Guide and de Fries’s account of his Siberian journey.
The train gave a sudden ‘Choof, choof, as if it had woken up and was raring to go. There were no passengers in sight. As I shut my suitcase the official made a grab at a photograph of my father in uniform.
‘Who is this?’
‘My father,’ I replied.
He looked disbelieving, but compared it with an oleograph of Stalin dressed as a Field Marshal which was hanging on the wall of the shed and decided that the snapshot was too casual to be that of a foreign political leader. He dropped it on the counter.
The female customs officer had filled in the receipt and handed it to Kenneth to sign. We still have this and it reads:
‘Quarantine inspection at Bigosovsk, 1st September, 1940. Inspector Breusovskaya, acting in accordance with import regulations, completed the following document stating that Mr Benton proceeding to America via Moscow had his baggage examined and the following scheduled plants were found: 11 tomatoes originating in Germany. Signs of disease were noticed (a spotty appearance). The tomatoes were confiscated and destroyed on the customs premises.’
A moment later we were racing for the train as steam hissed out to release the brakes and the engine wheels slowly began to turn. Our luggage was hurled in after us.
The train rumbled on through the darkness, the night bulb in the carriage ceiling shedding only a dim light. I wished that I could sleep like the others, but there comes a time when mind and body are too tired for rest and one remains painfully wakeful. Closed eyes give no relief. There is no escape from merciless awareness. When this happens it is wiser to abandon sleep and remain passive, absorbing any tiny plankton particles of interest which float through the mind.
In the corner opposite us Nick was sleeping, bolt upright, his hair still neatly parted, his toothbrush moustache ending sharply above his lip. His shoes, alone of the party, were still gleaming with years of polish.
On the seat beside him, her head on a rolled-up cardigan, her face looking anxious even in sleep, lay Dorothy Corrie. During our stay at Madame Mossolova’s we had shared many meals with Dorothy, as well as working together at the office, yet we had never formed a clear picture of her home background or family ties.
Kenneth and Co Froebelius had settled into opposite corners so that Barbara and I could have something firm to lean against. Barbara was fast asleep on Co’s shoulder and his eyes were closed. There were deep hollows beneath the high cheekbones of his pale face and a stubble shadow round his jaw. Perhaps owing to the dominant position of his brother Henry, the archivist, Co had assumed in our eyes a retiring image and, since he was taciturn and in some way alien, none of us had got to know him. Barbara was a handsome dark-haired girl with the quick wits and self-confidence of a Londoner.
Dawn came over a grey landscape. There were no washing facilities and nothing to eat on the train, and in any case, we had no roubles. At Vitebsk a queue formed on the platform for some sort of food, and at Smolensk there was a station buffet from which people emerged looking slightly less depressed. So we consoled ourselves with various mixtures from our crate of drinks and some biscuits which had escaped the attentions of the Breusovskaya. The hours passed very slowly. On the outskirts of Moscow some children were throwing lumps of mud into a muddy stream.
Towards tea time the train drew into the Riga Station, one of the great Moscow terminals. A forceful-looking Intourist courier was coming down the corridor shouting the Russian equivalent of ‘Everybody out’. Having assembled a dozen assorted foreigners he collected our Intourist coupons for one porter each, transport to our hotel, the name of which he would not reveal, and also for a sightseeing tour of Moscow.
Outside the station stood a coachful of visibly bored and restive Germans. We wondered how long they had waited for us since their own train came in, but as enemy nationals responsible for the delay felt it wiser not to enquire.
The Intourist guide produced a megaphone. Evidently the sightseeing tour was to be combined with our journey to the hotel. We were driving down a wide street of improbable drabness. ‘Workers’ flats,’ he bawled and then, swinging round to face the other side of the street and with the air of playing a trump card, ‘Railway workers’ flats’. These buildings, not long completed, had aged before their time and there was nothing to alleviate their sullen proportions and air of dispirited neglect.
‘There is a Ten-Year Plan for the city of Moscow,’ he bellowed. ‘The streets are all to be widened to twenty-five metres. In ten years you will not recognize the city.’ This at least held out some sort of encouragement, though we had no wish to check his prophecy.
The co
ach was taking a direct course towards the centre of Moscow and there were to be no deviations, it seemed, to show us the sights, in spite of our gold-dollar sightseeing coupons. The Germans were indignant, but we were too tired to care. ‘But the Kremlin—the Red Square,’ protested a burly German.
‘You can see them later, if you have time,’ he was told with obvious indifference.
Just before we reached the hotel the guide stood up with his megaphone once more. ‘That is the office where Molotov works,’ he said portentously, pointing to a frowning building. We drew up in front of a large hotel. METROPOL was written over the portico.
‘We’re twenty-five years too late,’ muttered Nick. ‘The Metropole was quite something in Tsarist days, I’ve been told.’
Together with our German companions we were herded through the entrance doors. The foyer was filled with people, mostly German and all querulous. We soon discovered why.
‘May we have the key to our room?’ we asked at the reception desk.
‘Wait here,’ was the reply. ‘Your luggage has not arrived.’
‘We want to go up. The luggage can follow later.’
‘You will wait,’ said the receptionist with the air of a school mistress addressing an insubordinate child.
Time passed. Everyone was tired in varying degrees and tempers short. To West Europeans the delay was inexplicable. All of us had reservations, otherwise we should not have been there. In one respect we had an edge over the Germans. They, as allies of the Russians, felt entitled to VIP treatment whereas we, from the opposite camp, though not actually at war with Russia, expected to be under-privileged.
More than an hour had passed since we’d reached the hotel and still no one had been allowed upstairs. A massive German woman wearing a fur coat which nearly touched the floor and a toque with a tuft of osprey feathers had been particularly loud in her complaints. When her harassed little husband finally refused to repeat her grievances at the reception desk she announced that she could stand no more. ‘I’m going to faint,’ she moaned. No one felt strong enough to catch her but, just in time, someone pushed a small gilt chair under her huge behind. This, and the satisfaction of being the only person in the foyer able to sit down, kept her calm for a while.
Baltic Countdown: A Nation Vanishes Page 16