“Then, after the Tukachevsky Putsch, God knows how many officers you shot. It must have run into thousands and the purge went on for months. Everybody who was even remotely suspected of being a reactionary came under suspicion. My hands were clean enough, because he had been your lifelong enemy, and nothing would ever have induced me to be disloyal to you. But, even so, somebody remembered that I was an ex-Czarist and they packed me off to a fifth-rate command in a fortress right up on the White Sea. Even there, I never knew from one day to the next if someone in the Kremlin wouldn’t put me on a list to be liquidated, without your knowing anything about it. So I decided to collect foreign exchange and, when I’d got a useful sum together, to get out. I was nearly ready to quit when my friend here was brought to the fortress as a prisoner, but he had a big sum in valuta on him and a plan for getting safely out of the country; so we did a deal and got out together.”
“You went back to Germany with him?” Voroshilov hazarded.
“Sacré Tonerre, no!” Kuporovitch exclaimed with a laugh. “Why should you think that? We had a girl with us, and a lovely one. A lady called the Countess von Osterberg. We went first to Norway and, while my friend stayed there for a time, I took her to Holland, then to Brussels. We met there again, and soon afterwards Hitler’s Blitzkrieg on the Low Countries broke. I took her to England while he remained behind, but I joined him once more in Paris the day before the city fell to the Nazis. By a stroke of great ill-luck I was knocked down by a car and nearly killed, so he left me for dead and made his way home, via Bordeaux, to England, while——”
“To England!” the Marshal interrupted, with a puzzled frown.
“Yes, of course. For the time being, after the collapse there was nothing more that he could do in France. I recovered and stayed on in Paris. Some months later he came over and we joined forces again. We did not leave until early June this year—a week or two before Hitler invaded Russia.”
“And what were you doing in Paris all that time?”
“We were plotting against the Germans. I was one of the earliest members of the French Resistance Movement.”
“And then?”
“We managed to get safely back to England, and I got married. You should see my little Madeleine, Clim. She is as sweet as a peach, and as plump as a partridge. Ah, Sacré Nom, it makes my old heart beat quickly even to think of her. She is a little Parisian and it was she who nursed me back to health and strength after my accident.”
“Where did your travels lead you after you got to England?”
“To Russia, of course. When I heard that Hitler had attacked us I naturally wanted to get back and fight. It is one thing to leave one’s country because a lot of politicals have turned it into a lousy hole, and quite another to stay away from it when foreign soldiers are polluting its soil. My friend here offered me an opportunity to get back, and although I knew that there was a good chance of my being shot for my long absence, I felt that I must chance it, if there was some hope of helping my country at the same time as I helped him with his mission.”
Voroshilov’s glance shifted to Gregory. “I should like to hear about this mission. From what has been said, it seems that you live in England. Is Colonel Baron von Lutz your real name?”
“Oh, no,” Gregory smiled. “The real Baron died a long time ago. I simply assumed his identity for the purposes of my work.”
“You are, then, an anti-Nazi agent? What is your nationality?”
“British.”
“I see. What was your object in coming to Russia?”
In the twenty minutes that followed the whole story came out. By a series of shrewd, quietly asked questions, the Marshal extracted all the information of any value that Gregory was capable of giving. For a little he kept on insisting that his prisoner must, in some way, be connected with the British Secret Service, but Gregory’s denials were so positive and his account of himself so circumstantial that, bearing in mind he was under the drug, Voroshilov could not possibly disbelieve him.
When the examination was concluded the prison commandant pressed a bell, the guards came in and the prisoners were taken back to their cells. They were both sweating freely and were so hot that they did not even notice the cold. They would certainly have caught pneumonia and, quite probably, died of it, had not a doctor visited them shortly afterwards. He made each of them swallow a draught and get into their beds, then he piled extra blankets as well as their furs on top of them, and left them.
By that time they were both feeling extremely sleepy, so they soon dropped off, and did not wake again until the doctor came to visit them, round about midday, next day.
When they awoke they remembered their interview with Marshal Voroshilov perfectly clearly up to the point where they had taken the drug and gone to sit by the stove; after that, their impressions were blurred and uncertain. They knew that they had talked a lot about themselves and their mission, but actual particulars as to what they had said escaped them. It was exactly as though they had dreamed the latter part of the scene. Their memories of most of it were vague, but isolated episodes stood out with the clarity of a flashlight photograph and these, with little to connect them, were all telescoped together in an almost senseless sequence.
Their apprehension of the peril in which they stood had been neither lessened nor increased by their interrogation. Before it they had known that all thought of escape from the Lubianka was quite hopeless and that an order for them to be shot might arrive at any time. Now, it seemed, if anything, more certain that the next time they were led out of their cells it would be to die.
After the doctor’s visit, they got up to eat their midday soup, but as time went on the chill of the cells began to worry them again; so, as soon as their evening coffee had been handed in, they repiled the furs and blankets on to their beds and got back into them. Once more they were aroused in the middle of the night, and this time neither of them doubted that they were about to be taken for their last walk.
It was almost with a sense of surprise that they found themselves on the far side of the dread courtyard, and realised they were being taken up through the modern block to the room in which they had been examined the night before. The same four officers were present and Marshal Voroshilov opened the proceedings without any waste of time.
“I have been thinking a lot about you two in the past twenty-four hours,” he announced. “I find the cases of both of you quite exceptional and intensely interesting. First, Stefan Kuporovitch, I will deal with you.”
Kuporovitch was already standing to attention. He now drew himself rigidly erect and with soldierly impassivity waited for sentence to be passed upon him.
“You must be aware,” the Marshal went on, “that you have merited death on half a dozen different counts. You abandoned your command, which technically, at least, was within a war zone. You deserted from the army. You betrayed the trust of your superiors and have clearly shown that you despise the régime that placed that trust in you. Your return to the Soviet Union was made under a false identity. You have screened yourself under the diplomatic privileges of a foreign power in order to undertake your subversive activities. You have aided and abetted the agent of a foreign power to obtain the military secrets of the Soviet Union. You connived in that foreign agent administering a drug to myself, a high officer of the Republic. Have you anything to say in your own defence?”
“Nothing, Marshal,” croaked Kuporovitch hoarsely.
“And you,” Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “You, too, have laid yourself open to the death penalty on more than one count. By assuming a false identity, as a German officer, for the purpose of obtaining access to me, you have forfeited any protection that you might normally claim as a member of the British Embassy staff in Moscow. By an amazing fabrication of lies and false pretences you obtained from me Soviet military secrets of the first importance. Moreover, although you may think that you had certain justification for doing so the fact remains that, on my having granted you an int
erview, you took advantage of an occasion that arose to give me what you had reason to believe to be a drink containing either poison or a drug; so, technically, you are guilty of an assault on the Garrison Commander of a beleaguered city, upon the holding of which much may depend. Have you anything to say in your own defence?”
“Yes, Marshal,” Gregory replied boldly. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by talking, and was still amazed that any opportunity had been given him to do so; but, since it had, he meant to make a fight for it, however slender his chances of influencing the Marshal’s apparently already made decision might appear.
“In the first place,” he began, “whatever the technical aspect of this business of my swopping drinks with you may be, I think any impartial judge would agree that you were to blame every bit as much as I was. It just could not have happened if you had not first attempted to drug me. As for the rest, I submit that everything both Stefan Kuporovitch and I have done has been in the interests of the Soviet Union, and with the object of more rapidly defeating our common enemy. That is my defence; and if you will be kind enough to allow me, I am prepared to prove my case point by point from beginning to end.”
“You have no need to do so,” the Marshal replied quietly.
For a moment Gregory felt deflated. All the wind had been taken out of his sails by this calm admission, which seemed to render any defence he might put up not only pointless, but farcical. Yet a second later his alertness was rekindled as Voroshilov went on:
“That has been my trouble each time I have tried to snatch a few moments during the day to consider your case. By all the laws of the Medes and Persians you should both be shot. I have no doubt at all that you would be if we were all in Moscow—where it would be my duty to hand you over to the Ogpu. But here, as Garrison Commander, I am the supreme authority in such matters; and I find it difficult to strike a balance between the illegal acts of which you have been guilty and the fact that they were committed for the purpose of securing proof that Britain would be well advised to supply arms and munitions to the Soviet Union.
“You, Stefan Kuporovitch,” the Marshal’s voice suddenly became scathing, “have shown yourself to be unworthy of the high rank conferred upon you. It is expected, and rightly expected, that all persons in the Soviet State who are elevated to positions of authority, whether in or outside the armed forces, should devote their whole energy and every inspiration to the well-being of the State. You know the desperate plight in which our country was left after the Civil Wars. Every city and town in Russia either lay in ruins or had fallen into decay. From end to end the country was devastated; the railways almost ceased to run, the canals were blocked, and ninety per cent of our bridges were down. Out of that chaos we brought order; and you have only to look around you at the fine new cities with their universities, hospitals, factories, theatres, airports, hydro-electric plants and canal systems, to realise the immense amount that has been done. Yet you complain that you are no longer able to live here the easy, slothful, wasteful life of a petty noble, who spends most of his money abroad instead of in his own country. Instead of putting your shoulder to the wheel in order that a time may more quickly arrive when all of us can enjoy some of those relaxations and luxuries you hanker after, you behave like a spoilt, irresponsible child and abandon an honourable position because you wish to go whoring in Paris.”
Kuporovitch hung his head. “You are right, Marshal. I had not looked at it in that way. It is, perhaps, because I was born in a generation which knew a happier, freer life than can be had in the Soviet Union today. No one who has ever had the chance to be an individualist can take easily to the idea of becoming one of a colourless multitude, and denying himself any fullness of life in the vague hope of improving the lot of the majority.”
“I understand that,” replied the Marshal more kindly. “I also appreciate that, although you have remained an individualist, you have not lost your love for your country. It is clear that you could have remained abroad with your English friends and your young French wife in ease and comfort for the rest of your days, had you chosen to do so. Yet you deliberately gave up all that and returned to Russia, knowing quite well that all the chances were you would be recognised and shot as a deserter; because you believed that in doing so you could help bring immensely important aid to the Soviet Union.”
“I take no credit for that,” said Kuporovitch simply. “How could I do otherwise? Any decent man would have done as much, given the same opportunity.”
Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “And you, Mr. Sallust. From your involuntary disclosures last night it emerged that you have rendered great services to your country. You are a very clever, unscrupulous and dangerous man. None of us here could take exception to that, as long as you continued to employ your talents against our common enemy—the Germans. But you elected to ignore the conventional trust which exists between allies and came to Russia in the capacity of a spy. Although you are not officially connected with the British Secret Service, your activities were calculated to have a gravely adverse effect on the relations of our two countries—and that is a very serious matter.”
“There, I’m afraid I can’t agree,” Gregory protested mildly. “I was sent here simply as an independent observer. Had I got away with the material I managed to collect the relations of Britain and Russia would be greatly strengthened. The British would have far greater confidence that, whatever reverses Russia might suffer, she was determined to fight on with them until the Nazis were finally destroyed, and the Russians would feel a far stronger bond with Britain when they saw great consignments of British tanks and aircraft reaching them. And that most satisfactory situation can still be brought about if you are prepared to release me and help me to get back to England.”
“What! Release you, now that you are in full possession of all the important secrets of Russia’s future strategy.” The Marshal shook his head. “There is a limit to the trust which even the best of allies can afford to place in one another. Your Government does not trust us with information as to when and where they propose eventually to open a Second Front. Why should we trust them with our plans for ensuring the final defeat of the Germans? No. You and Kuporovitch now know far too much for it to be possible for me even to consider releasing you. I can see no alternative but to pass the death sentence on you both.”
As the Marshal paused, the hearts of the two prisoners sank. During the past few moments it had seemed that he accepted their plea of a pro-Russian motive as a justification for what they had done. But apparently their urging of extenuating circumstances, and all the weighing of pros and cons in which they had indulged, counted for nothing; as the central fact in their case had been known to him from the beginning, and he had evidently made up his mind to condemn them in advance.
Then he went on: “But you are a brave man, and you placed your life in jeopardy only through a desire to serve your country. Therefore, if you are prepared to accept my conditions, I will suspend the sentence.”
Gregory’s eyes quickened with a new light. “That’s very generous of you, Marshal. For my part, I will agree to any conditions short of giving you an undertaking to work against my own country.”
“You should know that I would not ask it of you,” replied Voroshilov coldly. “On the other hand, you will have to forgo any prospect of serving your country further in the present war. This is the situation. The information you have acquired must at all costs be kept secret. The easiest way to ensure that would be to have you liquidated. The only possible alternative is to hold you prisoner until the war is over. I could keep you confined in a cell here, but that would entail certain risks. A shell or a bomb might destroy a part of the prison, thus enabling you to escape in the resulting confusion. If that happened you would almost certainly attempt to get away through the German lines, and might be captured there. Again, one must envisage the possibility that the Germans may take Leningrad. As long as I live I shall never surrender. But I might be killed and, e
ven if I am not, such immensely superior forces might be brought against me that our defences would be overwhelmed, and what was left of the city occupied. Once more in the ensuing confusion you might fall into the hands of the enemy.”
He lit a cigarette and continued: “Therefore, I must get you out of the city, to some part of the Soviet Union where it is impossible for you to be captured by the Germans. I can have you flown to a remote prison in Siberia. The death sentence is only suspended, you will remember, and any attempt to escape would result in its immediate execution. It is extremely difficult, but not absolutely impossible, to escape from such places. In consequence, my conditions are that, if I suspend your sentence, you will give me the additional guarantee for your security of your word of honour that in no circumstances will you attempt to escape; and you will also give me your word that while you are in prison you will not communicate anything that you have learned from me to any living person. Do you agree?”
Gregory barely hesitated. If he gave his word he felt that he would have to keep it. That would mean not only that his mission would remain uncompleted, but also that he would be out of the war for good. Yet the alternative was a bullet, and not just the possibility of a bullet a month hence, or in a few days’ time, but the definite certainty of a bullet in the next half-hour. Not an hour would be given him to try to think out a way of escape; no second chance to alter his mind. He must give his parole now, at once, or die.
“Yes,” he said, “I accept your conditions and give you my word of honour to stick to them.”
All this time Voroshilov had been addressing Gregory, who had formed the impression that his case was being dealt with separately, and that the conditions applied only to him. The Marshal’s look now shifted to Kuporovitch, and Gregory gave a quick glance sideways at him too. He knew that the Russian’s case must be far worse than his own, in the Marshal’s eyes, and felt that he must make every effort to save his friend.
Come into my Parlour Page 27