Kuporovitch was there standing with his back to a big fire of logs. Another orderly was laying a mahogany table for five people. Moving over to a sideboard the General poured out five glasses of vodka.
The fiery spirit made Angela choke but Gregory took his down in one gulp, as he knew he was expected to do, and was poured a second ration as they sat down to table where, to start off with, they were given helpings of caviar which would have cost a pound a portion in London.
It was their first opportunity for nearly two months to learn anything of the progress of the war and the General spoke quite freely about it when they questioned him.
The Finns had put up a much stronger resistance than had been expected. It seemed that the Soviet Political Commissars had been grossly misinformed. They had believed that they had only to create a Finnish Communist Government under Kuusinen for the Finnish Workers to arise and revolt against the brigand, Mannerheim; but that had not proved the case at all. Instead of a walkover the war was proving an expensive business for the Soviet. The early attacks on the Mannerheim Line had failed completely so many more troops had been brought up and another onslaught launched between January the 22nd and 28th; but that had failed also. It had not been until a third great offensive, at the end of the first week in February, that the line had even been dented at its coastal extremity to the south and the Finns were still holding their first-line positions in the north, at Taipale, where the line ended on Lake Ladoga.
The Soviet attacks had proved equally disastrous against the Finnish waistline further north and owing to the incredibly bad communications several Russian divisions had been very badly mauled. The General attributed these reverses to the fact that, against the advice of the military commanders, the politicals had insisted that second-rate troops were quite good enough to use in the easy victory they anticipated over Finland; but he said he thought that things would be different now as Marshal Budenny had brought some of his crack divisions up to be employed on the Karelian Isthmus, and the Russian War Lord, Marshal Voroshilov, had taken command of operations there in person.
As a dish of venison was served they passed to the war between Germany and England and France; but about this the General had little to tell. He said that all over Europe it had proved the severest winter for the best part of a century. Even England was reported to have been under snow for several weeks at a stretch and Central Europe had been entirely frozen up; which probably accounted for the continued delay in the launching of the threatened Nazi Blitzkrieg.
The Germans had been making continuous air-attacks on British shipping and, if their reports were to be believed, half the British Navy and countless British cargo ships had been sunk; but then … he smiled a cynical apology to his guests … nobody outside Germany did believe the German reports. It was quite clear from bulletins issued in the United States and other neutral countries that the British convoy system was working with almost miraculous effect and the British Air Force was continuing to drop leaflets with impunity all over Germany. The raids on both sides were, however, no more than tip-and-run affairs and the war in the West seemed to have reached a stalemate.
“No other countries became involved, then, during the time that we were out of the world?” asked Erika.
The General shook his head. “No. Herr Hitler continues to exercise pressure on the Balkans and it looks as though he is gaining ground there. At the end of January the Rumanian Government took over the control of all the oil concerns, in order to ensure Germany a good supply, but Italy is the dominating factor in the Balkans now. Mussolini is straining every nerve to keep the peace there, but he continues to be very antagonistic towards us. He has sent quite a number of planes to Finland.”
“How about the Scandinavian countries?” Gregory inquired. “Do you think they will continue to keep out?”
“Yes. Sweden and Norway are helping Finland with military supplies and they have sent many volunteers. Without them I doubt if the Finns could have held out for so long; but they dare not openly declare war on us—much as they would like to do so, They are much too frightened of being attacked by Germany in the south. There was great excitement in Norway last week, though. A German cargo ship with three or four hundred British prisoners on board who had been captured during the actions of the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic sought refuge in Norwegian territorial waters and was creeping down the coast on her way home. For once the British took the bull by the horns and sent a destroyer right up the fjord where this ship, the Altmark, was lying up. The British sailors boarded her with cutlasses and took their compatriots off. It was a direct contravention of Norwegian neutrality, of course, and set every Embassy in Europe humming with activity.”
Freddie’s French was not very good but he had been managing to follow the conversation with a word of help from Angela here and there. Having gathered the gist of the General’s remarks he began to grin with delight at this grand, old-fashioned naval action; Gregory caught his expression before he could speak and, giving him a hard kick under the table to remind him that he was supposed to be a German, launched out into a bitterly hostile attack against Britain’s cunning, injustice and hypocrisy.
Some very sticky sweet cakes completed the meal and with them Caucasian champagne was served—at least, strictly speaking, it was not served, for the orderlies just opened a couple of bottles and dumped them on the table.
As they drank the rich, sweet wine the General turned the conversation and refused to discuss the war any further, saying that he was much more interested in other developments outside Russia, of which he had been able to gather very little for a long time past owing to the strictness of the Soviet censorship. Erika and Gregory willingly gave him many details about conditions in Germany at the time they had left it and the state of things in other European countries which they had visited before the war; all of which their host lapped up with the eagerness of a child who is let loose in a sweet shop after having long been denied sweets.
While they talked they drank. There appeared to be an inexhaustible supply of the Muscat-flavoured champagne which, since the orderlies had left the room after stacking the dirty plates together while the diners were still at table, the General fetched, bottle by bottle as it was required, from a case under the sideboard. By midnight Angela and Erika were so tired that they had great difficulty in suppressing their yawns, while Freddie looked extremely bored; he could only follow the conversation with great difficulty and had long since given up any attempt to do so. At length, as the General showed not the least inclination to go to bed, Erika asked if he would excuse them since they were all terribly tired after their ninety-mile sleigh-drive.
He stood up at once and apologised for his thoughtlessness but expressed his hope that the men would not leave him yet as he had not enjoyed himself so much for ages. Gregory expressed his willingness to make a night of it but he noted with some concern the look of almost comical indecision on Freddie’s face.
Having lived within earshot of Freddie and Angela for weeks at a stretch he knew that they were as amorously inclined as most healthy engaged couples, but Freddie would never have admitted such a thing to a third party and his embarrassment upon being shown into a double bedroom with Angela earlier that evening arose from his desire to continue to shield Angela’s reputation even before their friends. Gregory did not care two hoots if Freddie took what the gods and Angela seemed prepared to give him or slept in his clothes on the sofa in her room; the one thing he did not want was any fuss about their sharing a room, which might cause the General to suspect the particulars he had been given about the party even more than he obviously did at the moment.
To Gregory’s joy Angela stepped into the breach by gamely relieving Freddie of any responsibilty. Smiling at the General she said sweetly in her best French: “As the Baron is going to remain up with you I’m sure that you won’t object to my taking my husband with me, because I never sleep well without him.”
Picking up the old silver
candelabra the General personally lighted his guests to their rooms and a few minutes later returned to Gregory.
Having polished off the current bottle of champagne Kuporovitch fetched a bottle of sleivowitz from the sideboard, remarking: “That fizzy stuff’s all right for a change but I only had it up for the women. I expect that, like myself, you prefer a man’s drink, eh, Baron?”
“Thanks.” Gregory kicked the logs into a blaze before settling down beside the fire. “I’m all for something with a kick in it.”
Putting the bottle of plum brandy on a small table between them, the General sat down again and they began to talk once more upon many topics which are a closed book to Russia’s millions: the possibility of German and Austrian restorations; the part still played by the British monarchy in the affairs of the Empire; the truth behind the headlines about the Civil War in Spain; the purchasing power of the mark in Germany, the franc in France, the pound in England and the dollar in America; the development of the film industry outside Soviet Russia with the part that ballet and the theatre played in the Western world; the price of stalls and gallery in terms of roubles; the cost of good food in the best restaurants in capitalist countries; the price of apartments, steamship travel and clothes.
It was quite clear to Gregory that General Kuporovitch was not an ordinary Bolshevik leader who had started his life as one of the ignorant Russian masses, but a man of considerable culture who was rusty on his subjects only because he had so little opportunity to talk of them, and when they were half-way through the second bottle of sleivowitz the General’s story began to emerge.
He was not an aristocrat of sufficient prominence for his name alone to have brought disaster on him in the Revolution, but he came of a good family and had been a captain, aged twenty-nine, in a cavalry regiment when the Revolution had broken out. As he said: “All thinking Russians were atheists and Liberals in those days. We knew that the monarchy was rotten and it disgusted us to think that the Little Father, weak fool that he was, should allow himself to be made a dupe by that dirty villainous priest, Rasputin. We officers who had to fight the war had plenty of evidence of the corruption that was rife in high places. The soles of the boots issued to our men were made of paper. They were sent to the front with only one rifle between three men and there was never enough ammunition for the guns. The country was long overdue for a proper clean-up; so when the Social Democrat Revolution took place, and the Tsar was forced to abdicate, we officers hailed the news with every bit as much joy as our men.
“When the Bolsheviks seized power, six months later, that meant very little to us down on the lower Volga until a movement started among the men to shoot all their officers. But we had been fighting the Turks most of the time and I had had the luck to save the life of one of my sergeants—a chap called Budenny.”
“The Budenny?” Gregory asked with interest.
“That’s it. All the world knows him as Marshal Budenny today; but then he was just Sergeant Budenny, of the Dragoons; a great strapping fellow with a moustache like a couple of horses’ tails. He protected me when some of the others wanted to put me up against a brick wall.
“Someone—God knows who—ordered us away from the front and we went to Tsaritsyn—they call it Stalingrad now. They would have shot me if I’d tried to leave them, so I went with my regiment. A few weeks later Voroshilov arrived there after his amazing retreat from the Ukraine and was elected to defend the town. It was Voroshilov who picked Budenny out of the rut and Budenny took me with him. Horses were his speciality and he hadn’t got much of a brain—but enough to know that my military education would be useful.
“Tsaritsyn was right at the apex of the triangle held by the Bolsheviks. They called it the Salient of Death, you know—the Red Verdun. The odds against us were tremendous; but if the Reds hadn’t managed to hang on there the grain barges would no longer have been able to get up the Volga. Moscow would have starved and the Revolution would have collapsed. By the time I had been fighting there for a few weeks it became a matter of professional honour to me and lots of other regular soldiers who were with the Reds that the town should not be allowed to fall. I don’t think we cared much whom we were fighting, but by the time it was all over I was looked on as a dyed-in the-wool Bolshevik.”
“Strange, the tricks Fate plays with men, isn’t it?” Gregory commented.
Kuporovitch refilled the glasses; his hand was steady as a rock but his voice had begun to slur just a trifle as he went on:
“Yes. Fate served me well, though, to put me where it did. I’d probably have done the same if I’d been with the Army commanded by Tukachevsky—been made a Red General afterwards too—but I’d be dead by now. As it was, I was a Voroshilov man and no soldier ever served under a finer leader. He was just a mechanic—never handled a rifle until the Revolution broke out; but he held Tsaritsyn for six months against all comers. He wasn’t afraid of God or the Devil. He even told War Lord Trotsky to go to hell when Trotsky wanted to relieve him of his command because he wasn’t a professional soldier.” The General leaned forward and banged the table. “D’you know what Clim Voroshilov said to Trotsky?”
“No,” said Gregory.
“I’ll tell you,” said the General a little thickly. “Trotsky threatened to arrest him for insubordination, so Clim turned round and said: ‘You arrest me, a Russian working man, one of the oldest members of the Bolshevik Party and an active revolutionary of twenty years’ standing? You—who only sneaked back from Canada after the Revolution was all over to join the Party six months ago? Get to hell out of here—you dirty, snivelling Jew journalist, or I’ll throw you out—and you can tell Lenin what I said!’”
“Good for him!” laughed Gregory. “Of course, Tukachevsky was Trotsky’s pet, wasn’t he, while Voroshilov was backed by Stalin; who wasn’t such a big noise in those days?”
Kuporovitch paused with the bottle in his hand and replied in a lowered voice: “It’s all right to mention Stalin here—these old walls have no dictaphones—but wiser not to talk about him where you’re liable to be overheard. He was with us down at Tsaritsyn, as Clim’s Political Commissar. Clim’s a decent sort and never soiled his hands with murder; but the other one—well, sometimes I think he’s the Fiend in person.”
Gregory nodded. “He must have bumped off a good few people in his time.”
“You’d never believe what’s been going on these last three years.” The General raised his eyebrows to heaven. “It started with the Tukachevsky Putsch in 1937. They executed him and eight other leading Generals; then the Ogpu began to trace the ramifications of the whole conspiracy. Thirty Army Corps commanders disappeared and hundreds of other Generals—yes, hundreds I said. Staff after staff was wiped out. They did the same thing in the Navy and the Air Force. There was hardly an officer over the rank of Captain left in the Soviet Army. That’s the inside story of this colossal mess they’ve made in Finland. Fellows commanding the battalions there have been jumped up from platoon leaders. Not one out of ten of the staff officers has ever seen the inside of a military college for as much as a month’s course. At a rough estimate—judged by the divisions I know about—Koba Stalin must have executed between 30,000 and 40,000 senior officers in the last two and a half years.”
Gregory had heard the same tale of wholesale murder from a very different source but he forbore to comment and asked:
“How did you manage to escape?”
The General laughed, a little drunkenly. “Because I’m an old friend of Clim’s. After Tsaritsyn I was with him when we formed the First Cavalry Army, which took Rostov, and I was with him all through the Polish campaign. Sacré nom, those were the days! We thought we were going to Paris! Luckily for me, Clim Voroshilov doesn’t forget his old friends. All the same, they won’t trust me with a command and I have to put up with a damned Political Commissar who pries into everything I do. Thank God his wife’s ill, so he’s down in the town tonight, otherwise I’d never risk talking to you like this; but it�
�s the first chance that I’ve had for years to talk to anyone intelligent without fear of being reported.”
“I’m very flattered, General,” Gregory smiled, “but don’t you think it’s a risk to talk to me? Say I repeated what you’ve said?”
The Russian’s lazy blue eyes narrowed. “There’s no fear of that. In the first place, you’re one of my own kind, so you wouldn’t let me down. In the second, if you did nobody would believe you. I haven’t kept my head on my shoulders for all these years without learning a thing or two. I’m so pro-Stalin that the Pope of Rome is a heathen by comparison and although old Oggie—that’s my Political Commissar—is a nuisance, he’s more frightened of me than I am of him.”
“That’s the spirit!” Gregory laughed, filling up the glasses yet again. “But since we’re being frank, don’t you get damned sick of it? I shouldn’t think it’s much fun being a Soviet General and always having to mind your p’s and q’s.”
“Fun!” The General waved an arm. “It’s a godforsaken life and this is a godforsaken country. There’s nothing here—nothing, d’you understand?—which could appeal to any civilised human being. It’s drab, dreary, poverty-stricken, and it gets worse instead of better with every year that passes. What wouldn’t I give to see Paris again?”
“You used to go there as a young man?”
“Mon Dieu, yes! Every year. And what a place it was in those days! Girls—scores of them—real girls—in silk and feathers—not animals, which are all we have left here. Beautiful women—exquisitely gowned and perfumed. Did you know Paris in those days? But no; you’re not old enough.”
“I’m old enough to remember the original Moulin Rouge,” Gregory smiled.
“Ah; the Moulin Rouge—and the Abbaye Thélème; where the girls danced on the tables without any drawers and we drank champagne out of their slippers.”
Faked Passports Page 40