It was the best part of five miles from Kronstadt to Oranienbaum, and it was unlikely that the old ferry would cover such a distance in less than twenty-five minutes. Before that time had elapsed it was as good as certain that the doorkeeper at the Admiralty would have been questioned and reported their audacious escape. It was possible that it still might not occur to anyone that they had gone straight to the liberty boat, or, since their escape had been made so close on twelve o’clock, that they would have had time to catch it. If so the Naval Police would be put on to comb the town and later the island for them. But if it was once suspected that they had made a dash for the liberty boat the Admiralty would telephone the port authorities at Oranienbaum, and the fugitives would be re-arrested on landing there.
Getting out of the crowd they stood nervously about on a quiet corner of the deck, cudgelling their brains in vain for a possible way to evade the strong possibility that they would be recaptured the moment they set foot on shore.
Kuporovitch suggested that they should hide somewhere in the terry, go back in her to Kronstadt, then attempt their landing after she had completed her next trip, which would probably start about three o’clock; his idea being that if the port police at Oranienbaum were on the look-out for them now and they did not appear it would be assumed that they had not taken the liberty boat after all, and that nobody would be expecting them when she came into Oranienbaum again about three-thirty.
But Gregory pointed out that the fact of their being in civilian clothes, among so many sailors, made them terribly conspicuous, and that it was even more likely that an order would have been given to the Oranienbaum police to keep a watch for them by three-thirty than it was at present. In fact, it was practically certain that precautions would be taken to prevent their getting away from the island in any later boat as a matter of routine; whereas there was still a chance that during the comparatively short space of half an hour nobody would have thought of doing so.
It was not snowing, but as soon as the terry was halt a mile out she lost the protection of the southernmost promontory of Kronstadt island and was fully exposed to a chill wind blowing in from the open gulf. On Gregory’s suggestion that they should try to find a more sheltered spot they walked slowly aft, still feverishly seeking a way to minimize the risk of their becoming prisoners again in some twenty minutes’ time.
As they approached the after part of the ferry they saw that beyond a set of rails the ultimate section of the vessel’s stern consisted of a separate, almost semi-circular platform somewhat lower than her main deck, and that this half-deck was allocated to the transport of vehicles. At the moment it was about two-thirds full, its cargo consisting of some half-hundred bicycles standing in racks, several motor-bikes, two small cars and a box van.
The second Gregory’s eye lit on the latter he asked, “What’s the writing on that van mean, Stefan?”
“The Red Fleet,” replied Kuporovitch promptly. “That is the name of the newspaper published mainly for the Soviet Navy. As Kronstadt is our principal naval base the paper would be printed in Leningrad, and I expect that van comes out each morning to make deliveries to the shore establishments on the island. I wonder if it is locked?”
The idea of getting into it had occurred to both of them almost simultaneously. Its driver, and those of the two cars, were nowhere about; they had evidently mingled with the crowd on the main deck or, as a large proportion of that was now doing, gone below to get out of the wind. There was no one on the transport deck at all, but unfortunately it was overlooked by the bridge deck of the ferry.
“By Jove! If only we could get into that van unseen!” exclaimed Gregory. “I bet they never bother to search it the other end, if it does a routine job; our chances of evading capture would be increased enormously.”
“They wouldn’t search it anyhow,” Kuporovitch remarked. “No one crossing on this ferry has to go through the Customs at Oranienbaum, because they can have come only from the island, and there is nothing dutiable obtainable there for anyone to attempt to smuggle across. The van will drive straight up a ramp and back to Leningrad, I expect.”
Neither of them had the least desire to return to Leningrad, but where the van might take them when it landed was of small importance compared to the chance of getting ashore unobserved. Both of them turned and gave the forward part of the ferry a quick, anxious scrutiny.
The crowd on deck had thinned considerably and was still drifting below; most of those who remained were now huddled on seats and in corners to the leeward side of the vessel; three figures were visible through the glass screens of the bridge, but all of them appeared intent on their business of steering the vessel, so their backs were turned; but there was one little group of sailors still standing within twenty feet of the fugitives and they did not look like moving as they were engaged in a heated argument.
Seeing Kuporovitch’s glance come to rest upon the group, Gregory said softly: “Let’s give them another ten minutes or so. Then, if they haven’t moved by the time the transport deck is coming into view from the shore, we’ll have to chance it.”
Barely a third of the time limit he suggested had expired when one of the sailors broke off the argument with an angry shrug and stalked away towards the nearest companion-way. The others followed, more slowly, but in another minute they had disappeared below.
The two friends threw a swift glance at the bridge; the officers on it still had their backs turned. Without a word to one another they both jumped up on to the rail, swung their legs over and slipped down on to the half-deck below.
Controlling their impatience to get under cover, they advanced between the bicycle racks as though simply strolling there, until they reached the van. There were chocks under its tyres, to prevent it moving, and it was facing the starboard rail of the ferry, so its back was sideways on to the bridge; but luckily the rear doors were partially hidden by one of the cars which was parked a little forward of it.
“I’ll keep a watch on the bridge,” said Gregory tensely. “See if the doors are open.” As he stood there staring forward over the car top he added: “All’s well! Go ahead!”
Kuporovitch grabbed the handle of the door, turned it and pulled. To his joy, it swung open. Without losing an instant he stepped inside and, pulling it half-to cried: “Our luck is in! Come on!”
Gregory gave one last swift glance at the bridge and the upper deck of the ferry, then he turned, followed Kuporovitch into the van, and pulled the door to behind him.
To their great satisfaction they found that the van was absolutely empty, so there was no possibility of its driver coming to get anything out of it, or even any likelihood of his looking inside until he wished either to clean it or load it up again. They sat down side by side on the floor in the semi-darkness and at last relaxed a little. For the first time since they had been recognised by the Ogpu man it really seemed that they had a decent chance of getting away.
About twelve minutes later they heard the ferry’s engines stop, some shouts exchanged and the faint smack of ropes being thrown down on to her deck, then she bumped gently and came to rest alongside the Oranienbaum jetty. Now that the crucial moment of getting ashore had arrived they instinctively stilled their breathing and grew tense again.
“What shall I say if someone does open the van door?” Kuporovitch whispered.
“Let’s lie down and pretend we are asleep,” Gregory suggested. “Then you could say that we got in here to get out of the cold, and that having been up all night we dropped off.”
“What reason can we give for having been up all night?”
“Say that we’re journalists who have just returned from a trip on a minesweeper, and that we made it to get material for an article in the Red Fleet. We can still show our chits for the liberty boat and our vouchers for going on by rail to Leningrad, so those ought to get us through, providing the police are not waiting on the quay to nab us.”
They lay down at full length, closed their eyes and wa
ited. A good ten minutes later there came the sounds of bumping on the deck near by as a heavy ramp was lowered to it and made fast. Suddenly the engine of the van started up. Her clutch was thrown in and she jolted up the steep ramp on to the quay. There she halted for a minute and the gruff voice of her driver could be heard talking to someone. Then she moved on, her speed increased and the two fugitives at last were able to give free vent to their immense relief, as they felt certain that she was out of the dockyard and running down a street.
Opening their eyes, they sat up and began to wonder how long it would be before the van stopped and they had a chance to get out. As Leningrad was well over twenty miles away, and they assumed that the driver was returning to the yard of the newspaper office there, they expected that the best part of an hour would elapse before he pulled up; but their guess was wrong. Within five minutes of having left the quay the van slowed down, stopped, backed a few yards and came to a halt.
As it did so they noticed that the light which percolated through the chinks of the door had dimmed. Then came the noise of the driver scrambling down from his seat, footsteps and the dragging to of a heavy door. The last light from the chinks disappeared and they were left in darkness.
For a full five minutes they sat on in silence, scarcely breathing; but as no sound came, Gregory eased the door open a crack and peered out. There was a faint light outside, so he pushed the door open a little further and saw that the van had been driven into a garage. The continued silence was a clear indication that the driver, having put his van away, had gone off about his own affairs; so they got out and walked softly over to the garage doors. Kuporovitch gave one of them a gentle push. Their luck was still in; it had not been padlocked on the outside, but merely shut.
Opening it a few inches, they peeped out and saw that they were in a mews. No one seemed to be about and the silence still continued.
“Let’s go!” said Gregory, and opening the door wider they stepped out into the mews.
Further up it a woman was hanging out washing on a line and at its far end a few ragged children were busily making a snowman; but they passed both the woman and the urchins without either giving them more than a disinterested glance. The mews abutted on a railway goods yard, so evidently, the bundles of papers came from Leningrad by train each day and the driver of the Red Fleet van collected his quota for distribution from the station, which they could now see a few hundred yards down the street.
Instinctively they turned in the opposite direction. Even if there had been no risk in doing so they would not have used the railway vouchers they had been given, since it would have been both pointless and dangerous for them to return to Leningrad; while, as it was, the railway police might by this time have been warned to watch for them on the offchance that they would attempt to get away from Kronstadt island by stealing a small boat.
They set off at a good pace, to get well clear of the harbour and station area, with lighter hearts than they had had for a long time, and Kuporovitch said quite cheerfully:
“Well, here we are, free men again, but with passports that we dare not use now that the Ogpu are after us, still in the encircled Leningrad area, and several thousand miles from London. Have you any ideas as to how we should get home?”
“Let’s be modest,” Gregory suggested, “and adopt the old policy of breaking the faggot one stick at a time. It will be soon enough to talk of the Vistula when we are over the Rhine, or, if you prefer, of London when we have reached Moscow.”
“Moscow is over four hundred miles away, mon vieux. To get there we have to pass through the Leningrad defence lines, which are about thirty miles deep at this point, then penetrate the German-held zone, which probably now extends about two hundred miles, then get across the main Russian front and, finally, cover the balance of another hundred and fifty miles or more.” Kuporovitch had not spoken despondently but as making a plain statement of fact.
“I know,” agreed Gregory. “It’s a bit of a teaser, isn’t it? Of course, if we worked round to the north-east of Leningrad the total distance would not be much greater, whereas the German-held belt is very much thinner there; probably not more than twenty miles deep.”
“That doesn’t seem to offer us any great advantage, since the Russians and the Germans are now equally anxious to have our blood.”
“True, and while the Russians are actively on the hunt for us the Germans are not, so it seems that the more German-held territory we cover on our trip the less risk we shall run.”
“What’s more, our worst danger lies in remaining in the Leningrad area, and to work our way round to the north-east of the city would prolong our stay in it, so I am in favour of striking due south with the object of getting clear of Clim’s command as soon as possible.”
“You’re right, Stefan. And there’s another thing. As I can’t speak a word of Russian, I’m a constant liability to you as long as we remain here, whereas once we are in the German lines I can easily pass for a German myself and you can speak enough German to pose as a Pole of German blood from the Poznan area, or something of that kind.”
“That’s so. But one of our worst troubles is lack of transport. Of course, I suppose we could walk the four hundred miles, but it would take us a devilish long time and if the information we’ve got is to be of any value we must get it to London within the next few weeks.”
Gregory nodded. “That’s been worrying me too. It would be suicidal for us to attempt to use the railways in either zone without papers, and at the moment I see no possible means of getting any.”
“We might hop a series of freight cars as the hobos do in America.”
“Yes, that’s a possibility. Let’s find a place to get a meal and think it over while we eat.”
“If you wish,” Kuporovitch shrugged, “but personally, I am not very hungry. We didn’t breakfast till ten o’clock, and in the middle of the night we had that splendid meal with the Gruppenführer.”
“So we did!” exclaimed Gregory. “Yet somehow that seems days ago. So much has happened recently it seems impossible to believe that this time yesterday we were still prisoners in the Lubianka, and that we only left there in the Black Maria a little over fourteen hours ago.”
“Yet it is true, and today is only the twenty-fourth of September.”
“Since you mention it, I’m not particularly hungry myself, but, all the same, I think we’d better have a meal. It is still less than an hour since we escaped from the Admiralty building, so they won’t have had time to circulate our descriptions through the local police-stations to the men who are already on duty yet; whereas if we wait until the evening every patrolman in the town will be keeping an eye open for us.”
“You’re right; and they are sure to watch the eating-places. So let’s fill up while we can, without undue anxiety.”
Two streets further on they found a fairly clean-looking but unpretentious fish restaurant, and going in sat down at a table. Kuporovitch ordered the meal without consulting Gregory, so that it should not become apparent that he was a foreigner, and, for the same reason, they did not converse during it. Although they were not hungry they ate as much as they could manage, as they were well aware of the value of being well lined in such a cold climate, and had no idea when they would see hot food again.
On leaving the place, Gregory said, “Well, any ideas?”
“Yes,” Kuporovitch smiled. “Why should we not return to the garage and find the Red Fleet van? It is unlikely that the driver will go back there until he has to collect his papers tomorrow morning, and by that time we should be well into the battle area.”
“What then, though? Directly we entered the German zone the Red Fleet van would be held up by every enemy patrol we met.”
“Oh, we’d have to abandon it, and adopt other measures from then on—jumping freight trains, perhaps.”
“No. We ought to keep away from the railway if we possibly can, and I think I’ve got a better idea than that. Let’s use the Black Ma
ria that’s in Grauber’s garage.”
“First we must find it, and that may not be too easy.”
“I know; but think of the terrific advantage it will give us if we can. Anyone can see that it is a prison van from a quarter of a mile away, and who would think of interfering with a van that would presumably have prisoners inside it? In fact, it will have—one, at all events.”
“It sounds a grand idea, but I don’t quite get your point about it having a prisoner inside it.”
“Look!” Gregory smiled. “We’d work it this way. If the van has not been discovered or moved it will still have that dead Ogpu guard inside. We’ll strip him of his clothes and you can put them on to act as driver, while I’ll be locked up but visible through the bars of one of the little windows as your prisoner. The fact of my not being able to talk Russian won’t matter then, if you’re pulled up and questioned. That, of course, is while we are within the Leningrad defence ring. As soon as we are out of it we’ll find a dead German on the battlefield and strip him of his clothes. I put them on and we change places. When we enter the Russian zone two hundred miles further on we swap places once more and I become your prisoner again for the last lap. How’s that?”
“Sacré nom! It is a stroke of genius!” Kuporovitch beamed. “Truly a stroke of genius! Let us not delay but set about finding Grauber’s garage at once, before the police get after us.”
They had got through their meal as quickly as possible, in order to avoid it being remarked that while Kuporovitch occasionally muttered something in Russian to Gregory, he never spoke but replied only by nods, smiles and shrugs, so it was only a quarter past one, and they returned to the harbour district with a fair amount of confidence that no general search was as yet being made for them in Oranienbaum.
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