by Ken Follett
They traveled to Schaffhausen, on the border, where they transferred to a German train. They all spoke some German, having been living in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. Lenin himself spoke it well. He was a remarkable linguist, Walter learned. He was fluent in French, spoke passable English, and read Aristotle in ancient Greek. Lenin's idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.
At Gottmadingen they changed again, to a train with a sealed carriage specially prepared for them as if they were carriers of an infectious disease. Three of its four doors were locked shut. The fourth door was next to Walter's sleeping compartment. This was to reassure overanxious German authorities, but it was not necessary: the Russians had no desire to escape, they wanted to go home.
Lenin and his wife, Nadya, had a room to themselves, but the others were crowded four to a compartment. So much for egalitarianism, Walter thought cynically.
As the train crossed Germany from south to north, Walter began to sense the force of character beneath Lenin's dull exterior. Lenin had no interest in food, drink, comfort, or possessions. Politics consumed his entire day. He was always arguing about politics, writing about politics, or thinking about politics and making notes. In arguments, Walter noted, Lenin always appeared to know more than his comrades and to have thought longer and harder than they--unless the subject under discussion was nothing to do with Russia or politics, in which case he was rather ill-informed.
He was a real killjoy. The first evening, the bespectacled young Karl Radek was telling jokes in the next compartment. "A man was arrested for saying, 'Nicholas is a moron.' He told the policeman: 'I meant another Nicholas, not our beloved tsar.' The policeman said: 'Liar! If you say moron you obviously mean the tsar!'" Radek's companions hooted with laughter. Lenin came out of his compartment with a face like thunder and ordered them to keep quiet.
Lenin did not like smoking. He himself had given it up, on his mother's insistence, thirty years ago. In deference to him, people smoked in the toilet at the end of the carriage. As there was only one toilet for thirty-two people this led to queues and squabbles. Lenin turned his considerable intellect to solving this problem. He cut up some paper and issued everyone with tickets of two kinds, some for normal use of the toilet and a smaller number for smoking. This reduced the queue and ended the arguments. Walter was amused. It worked, and everyone was happy, but there was no discussion, no attempt at collective decision-making. In this group, Lenin was a benign dictator. If he ever gained real power, would he manage the Russian empire the same way?
But would he win power? If not, Walter was wasting his time.
There was only one way he could think of to improve Lenin's prospects, and he made up his mind to do something about it.
He left the train at Berlin, saying he would be back to rejoin the Russians for the last leg. "Don't be long," one of them said. "We leave again in an hour."
"I'll be quick," said Walter. The train would depart when Walter said, but the Russians did not know that.
The carriage was in a siding at the Potsdamer station, and it took him only a few minutes to walk from there to the Foreign Office at 76 Wilhelmstrasse in the heart of old Berlin. His father's spacious room had a heavy mahogany desk, a painting of the kaiser, and a glass-fronted cabinet containing his collection of ceramics, including the eighteenth-century creamware fruit bowl he had bought on his last trip to London. As Walter had hoped, Otto was at his desk.
"There's no doubt of Lenin's beliefs," he told his father over coffee. "He says they have got rid of the symbol of oppression--the tsar--without changing Russian society. The workers have failed to take control: the middle class still runs everything. On top of that, Lenin personally hates Kerensky for some reason."
"But can he overthrow the provisional government?"
Walter spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "He is highly intelligent, determined, and a natural leader, and he never does anything except work. But the Bolsheviks are just another little political party among a dozen or more vying for power, and there's no way to tell who will come out on top."
"So all this effort may have been for nothing."
"Unless we do something to help the Bolsheviks win."
"Such as?"
Walter took a deep breath. "Give them money."
"What?" Otto was outraged. "The government of Germany, to give money to socialist revolutionaries?"
"I suggest a hundred thousand rubles, initially," Walter said coolly. "Preferably in gold ten-ruble pieces, if you can get them."
"The kaiser would never agree."
"Does he have to be told? Zimmermann could approve this on his own authority."
"He would never do such a thing."
"Are you sure?"
Otto stared at Walter in silence for a long time, thinking.
Then he said: "I'll ask him."
{ IV }
After three days on the train, the Russians left Germany. At Sassnitz, on the coast, they bought tickets for the ferry Queen Victoria to take them across the Baltic Sea to the southern tip of Sweden. Walter went with them. The crossing was rough and everyone was seasick except Lenin, Radek, and Zinoviev, who were on deck having an angry political argument and did not seem to notice the heavy seas.
They took an overnight train to Stockholm, where the socialist Borgmastare gave them a welcome breakfast. Walter checked into the Grand Hotel, hoping to find a letter from Maud waiting for him. There was nothing.
He was so disappointed that he wanted to throw himself into the cold water of the bay. This had been his only chance to communicate with his wife in almost three years, and something had gone wrong. Had she even received his letter?
Unhappy fantasies tormented him. Did she still care for him? Had she forgotten him? Was there perhaps a new man in her life? He was completely in the dark.
Radek and the well-dressed Swedish socialists took Lenin, somewhat against his will, to the menswear section of the PUB department store. The hobnailed mountain boots the Russian had been wearing vanished. He got a coat with a velvet collar and a new hat. Now, Radek said, he was at least dressed like someone who could lead his people.
That evening, as night fell, the Russians went to the station to board yet another train for Finland. Walter was leaving the group here, but he went with them to the station. Before the train left, he had a meeting alone with Lenin.
They sat in a compartment under a dim electric light that gleamed off Lenin's bald head. Walter was tense. He had to do this just right. It would be no good to beg or plead with Lenin, he felt sure. And the man certainly could not be bullied. Only cold logic would persuade him.
Walter had a prepared speech. "The German government is helping you to return home," he said. "You know we are not doing this out of goodwill."
Lenin interrupted in fluent German. "You think it will be to the detriment of Russia!" he barked.
Walter did not contradict him. "And yet you have accepted our help."
"For the sake of the revolution! This is the only standard of right and wrong."
"I thought you would say that." Walter was carrying a heavy suitcase, and now he put it down on the floor of the railway carriage with a thump. "In the false bottom of this case you will find one hundred thousand rubles in notes and coins."
"What?" Lenin was normally imperturbable, but now he looked startled. "What is it for?"
"For you."
Lenin was offended. "A bribe?" he said indignantly.
"Certainly not," said Walter. "We have no need to bribe you. Your aims are the same as ours. You have called for the overthrow of the provisional government and an end to the war."
"What, then?"
"For propaganda. To help you spread your message. It is the message that we, too, would like to broadcast. Peace between Germany and Russia."
"So that you can win your capitalist-imperialist war against France!"
"As I said before, we are not helping you out of go
odwill--nor would you expect us to. It's practical politics, that's all. For the moment, your interests coincide with ours."
Lenin looked as he had when Radek insisted on buying him new clothes: he hated the idea, but could not deny that it made sense.
Walter said: "We'll give you a similar amount of money once a month--as long, of course, as you continue to campaign effectively for peace."
There was a long silence.
Walter said: "You say that the success of the revolution is the only standard of right and wrong. If that is so, you should take the money."
Outside on the platform, a whistle blew.
Walter stood up. "I must leave you now. Good-bye, and good luck."
Lenin stared at the suitcase on the floor and did not reply.
Walter left the compartment and got off the train.
He turned and looked back at the window of Lenin's compartment. He half-expected the window to open and the suitcase to come flying out.
There was another whistle and a hoot. The carriages jerked and moved, and slowly the train steamed out of the station, with Lenin, the other Russian exiles, and the money on board.
Walter took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat and wiped his forehead. Despite the cold, he was sweating.
{ V }
Walter walked from the railway station along the waterfront to the Grand Hotel. It was dark, and a cold east wind blew off the Baltic. He should have been rejoicing: he had bribed Lenin! But he felt a sense of anticlimax. And he was more depressed than he should have been over the silence from Maud. There were a dozen possible reasons why she had not sent him a letter. He should not assume the worst. But he had come dangerously close to falling for Monika, so why should Maud not do something similar? He could not help feeling she must have forgotten him.
He decided he would get drunk tonight.
At the front desk he was given a typewritten note: "Please call at suite 201 where someone has a message for you." He guessed it was an official from the Foreign Office. Perhaps they had changed their minds about supporting Lenin. If so, they were too late.
He walked up the stairs and tapped on the door of 201. From inside a muffled voice said in German: "Yes?"
"Walter von Ulrich."
"Come in, it's open."
He stepped inside and closed the door. The suite was lit by candles. "Someone has a message for me?" he said, peering into the gloom. A figure rose from a chair. It was a woman, and she had her back to him, but something about her made his heart skip. She turned to face him.
It was Maud.
His mouth fell open and he stood paralyzed.
She said: "Hello, Walter."
Then her self-control broke and she threw herself into his arms.
The familiar smell of her filled his nostrils. He kissed her hair and stroked her back. He could not speak for fear he might cry. He crushed her body to his own, hardly able to believe that this was really her, he was really holding her and touching her, something he had longed for so painfully for almost three years. She looked up at him, her eyes full of tears, and he stared at her face, drinking it in. She was the same but different: thinner, with the faintest of lines under her eyes where there had been none before, yet with that familiar piercingly intelligent gaze.
She said in English: "'He falls to such perusal of my face, as he would draw it.'"
He smiled. "We're not Hamlet and Ophelia, so please don't go to a nunnery."
"Dear God, I've missed you."
"And I you. I was hoping for a letter--but this! How did you manage it?"
"I told the passport office I planned to interview Scandinavian politicians about votes for women. Then I met the home secretary at a party and had a word in his ear."
"How did you get here?"
"There are still passenger steamers."
"But it's so dangerous--our submarines are sinking everything."
"I know. I took the risk. I was desperate." She began to cry again.
"Come and sit down." With his arm still around her waist, he walked her across the room to the couch.
"No," she said when they were about to sit. "We waited too long, before the war." She took his hand and led him through an inner door to a bedroom. Logs crackled in the fireplace. "Let's not waste any more time. Come to bed."
{ VI }
Grigori and Konstantin were part of the delegation from the Petrograd soviet that went to the Finland Station late in the evening of Monday, April 16, to welcome Lenin home.
Most of them had never seen Lenin, who had been in exile for all but a few months of the last seventeen years. Grigori had been eleven years old when Lenin left. Nevertheless he knew him by reputation, and so, it seemed, did thousands more people, who gathered at the station to greet him. Why so many? Grigori wondered. Perhaps they, like him, were dissatisfied with the provisional government, suspicious of its middle-class ministers, and angry that the war had not ended.
The Finland Station was in the Vyborg district, close to the textile mills and the barracks of the First Machine Gun Regiment. There was a crowd in the square. Grigori did not expect treachery, but he had told Isaak to bring a couple of platoons and several armored cars to stand guard just in case. There was a searchlight on the station roof, and someone was playing it over the mass of people waiting in the dark.
Inside, the station was full of workers and soldiers, all carrying red flags and banners. A military band played. Twenty minutes before midnight, two sailors' units formed up on the platform as a guard of honor. The delegation from the soviet loitered in the grand waiting room formerly reserved for the tsar and the royal family, but Grigori went out onto the platform with the crowd.
It was about midnight when Konstantin pointed up the line and Grigori, following his finger, saw the distant lights of a train. A rumble of anticipation rose from those waiting. The train steamed into the station, puffing smoke, and hissed to a halt. It had the number 293 painted on its front.
After a pause a short, stocky man got off the train wearing a double-breasted wool coat and a Homburg hat. Grigori thought this could not be Lenin--surely he would not be wearing the clothes of the boss class? A young woman stepped forward and handed him a bouquet, which he accepted with an ungracious frown. This was Lenin.
Behind him was Lev Kamenev, who had been sent by the Bolshevik Central Committee to meet Lenin at the border in case of problems--though in fact Lenin had been admitted without trouble. Now Kamenev indicated with a gesture that they should go to the royal waiting room.
Lenin rather rudely turned his back on Kamenev and addressed the sailors. "Comrades!" he shouted. "You have been deceived! You have made a revolution--and its fruits have been stolen from you by the traitors of the provisional government!"
Kamenev went white. It was the policy of almost everyone on the left to support the provisional government, at least temporarily.
Grigori was delighted, however. He did not believe in bourgeois democracy. The parliament allowed by the tsar in 1905 had been a trick, disempowered when the unrest came to an end and everyone went back to work. This provisional government was headed the same way.
And now at last someone had the guts to say so.
Grigori and Konstantin followed Lenin and Kamenev into the reception room. The crowd squeezed in after them until the room was crammed. The chairman of the Petrograd soviet, the balding, rat-faced Nikolai Chkeidze, stepped forward. He shook Lenin's hand and said: "In the name of the Petrograd soviet and the revolution, we hail your arrival in Russia. But . . . "
Grigori raised his eyebrows at Konstantin. This "but" seemed inappropriately early in a speech of welcome. Konstantin shrugged his bony shoulders.
"But we believe that the main task of revolutionary democracy consists now of defending our revolution against all attacks . . . " Chkeidze paused, then said with emphasis: " . . . whether internal or external."
Konstantin murmured: "This is not a welcome, it's a warning."
"We
believe that to accomplish this, not disunity but unity is necessary on the part of all revolutionists. We hope that, in agreement with us, you will pursue these aims."
There was polite applause from some of the delegation.
Lenin paused before replying. He looked at the faces around him and at the lavishly decorated ceiling. Then, in a gesture that seemed a deliberate insult, he turned his back on Chkeidze and spoke to the crowd.
"Comrades, soldiers, sailors, and workers!" he said, pointedly excluding middle-class parliamentarians. "I salute you as the vanguard of the world proletarian army. Today, or perhaps tomorrow, all of European imperialism may collapse. The revolution you have made has opened up a new epoch. Long live the world socialist revolution!"
They cheered. Grigori was startled. They had only just achieved a revolution in Petrograd--and the results of that were still in doubt. How could they think about a world revolution? But the idea thrilled him all the same. Lenin was right: all people should turn on the masters who had sent so many men to die in this pointless world war.
Lenin marched away from the delegation and out into the square.
A roar went up from the waiting crowd. Isaak's troops lifted Lenin onto the reinforced roof of an armored car. The searchlight was trained on him. He took off his hat.
His voice was a monotonous bark, but his words were electric. "The provisional government has betrayed the revolution!" he shouted.
They cheered. Grigori was surprised: he had not known how many people thought the way he did.
"The war is a predatory imperialist war. We want no part in this shameful imperialist slaughter of men. With the overthrow of the capital we can conclude a democratic peace!"
That got a bigger roar.
"We do not want the lies or frauds of a bourgeois parliament! The only possible form of government is a soviet of workers' deputies. All banks must be taken over and brought under the control of the soviet. All private land must be confiscated. And all army officers must be elected!"