The Aquila Project

by Norman Russell

  They followed their guide off the quay, and through a wicket gate that took them on to a long, narrow pathway bordering one of the many canals of the dock area. To their left rose the frontages of picturesque ancient houses, evidently both homes and places of business to the many merchants who dealt in timber, corn and sugar. From time to time the row of houses was interrupted by massive buildings of stone, brick and wood, which frowned darkly over the waterway to their right, and looking as though they would collapse at any moment. These buildings housed the great hoists used for lifting cargo from the many-barges tethered at the canal-side. By now, the sunset had faded, and it was getting dark.

  Box stole a glance at his companions. Colonel Kershaw, who was carrying a stout carpet bag, looked straight ahead, and walked rapidly, as though anxious for them to reach their safe house. Behind him on the narrow pavement his sergeant-armourer, Morrison, a cheerful but taciturn man, was burdened with a long canvas case slung over his shoulder. Box wondered what the case contained. The fourth member of the party, Kolinsky, had a knapsack slung across his back. A quiet, modest man with little conversation, he was the only one of the party who looked around him with an obvious interest in his surroundings. Kershaw had told Box that Kolinsky spoke fluent German, Russian and Polish.

  The guide suddenly turned left, and they found themselves on yet another waterside pathway, above which rose a line of eight-storeyed warehouses, decorated in black and white bands of painted wood, like old Tudor buildings. At the end of this path a narrow alley took them abruptly from the world of waterways and into one of the streets of the old town. Here they stopped at a tall wooden house, and the guide knocked at the door. Soon, thought Box, they would be safe from prying eyes.

  Towards ten o’clock, Arnold Box sought out Morrison, the sergeant-armourer. He found him in a little attic room of the lodging house. He was sitting on a stool, and across his knees lay a rifle, which he was cleaning by the flickering light of a candle. Beside him on the window sill stood a can of oil and a number of well-used rags.

  ‘How are you, Mr Morrison?’ asked Box. ‘These little bedrooms are a change from the Royal Navy’s hammocks!’

  ‘They are, Mr Box, and very welcome, after three days and nights at sea. Kolinsky tells me that this is a licensed lodging house, but we’re the only lodgers, or so it seems to me. But then, the colonel knows some very peculiar places.’

  Morrison took up one of the rags, and turned his attention to the rifle. Box saw that the long canvas case that Morrison had carried slung over his shoulder lay on the floor beside the stool. Why was this man carrying a rifle? Was he contemplating some kind of fight? He saw that the sergeant-armourer had read the query in Box’s eyes.

  ‘You’re wondering about this weapon, aren’t you, Mr Box? This is Colonel Kershaw’s favourite rifle, one of the 1892 models of the Lee-Metford Magazine Rifle Mark 1. Beautiful, isn’t it? This one always polishes up to look like purple mahogany! Just over four feet long, as you can see, with its own magazine of .303 calibre bullets, and a specially designed hair trigger. That little brass tube mounted above the stock is a telescopic sight, with cross-wires between the lenses.’

  ‘And this rifle was made especially for Colonel Kershaw?’

  ‘Well, it’s standard British Army issue, but the trigger, and the special sight, were made to the colonel’s own specifications.’

  ‘Why should Colonel Kershaw want to bring a rifle with him?’ asked Box. He had already postulated a rather unpleasant answer to his own question, and wondered what Morrison would suggest.

  ‘Well, Mr Box,’ Morrison replied, looking steadily at the inspector with a quizzical smile, ‘the Lee-Metford is a fine hunting weapon, so maybe the colonel hopes to get a bit of hunting in before he returns to England. I believe that you can bag wild boar in these parts.’

  Yes, thought Box, I expect you can; but Colonel Kershaw’s idea of what constituted a wild boar was almost certainly different from the usual definition. It would be wise to ask no more questions.

  They rose just after dawn the next morning, and breakfasted on hot coffee and soft bread rolls and butter in the kitchen of the lodging-house. Box thought of his snug sitting-room in Mrs Peach’s house in Cardinal Court, off Fleet Street, where he would have been served bacon and egg, or a nice kipper, washed down with two cups of tea – proper London tea, that you could stand your spoon up in.

  They left the house just after seven o’clock, and followed their guide through a number of thronging streets until they came to a busy railway station. Box saw the man hand a number of tickets to Kershaw, bow his head in the Prussian fashion, and disappear rapidly into the crowds. Within minutes the colonel had found the correct platform, and they had climbed up into the 8.15 stopping-train to Posen. Their adventure had begun.

  12

  Encounter at St Mary of the Icon

  THE CARRIAGE OF the 8.15 train to Posen was arranged as a single long compartment, with wooden seats on either side of a wide gangway. Box and Kershaw sat together, facing their two companions. Their luggage rested on the floor beside them, as there seemed to be no luggage racks. Colonel Kershaw held their tickets, and it had been agreed that he and Kolinsky would do any necessary talking.

  With a sudden jolt, the train started, and began to move slowly out of the station.

  The carriage was half full and, glancing round him, Box saw that most of their fellow-passengers looked like businessmen or merchants, though there were a number of country folk as well, men and women dressed in what was evidently national costume. A group of soldiers, in the field-grey uniform of the German Army, sat by themselves at the back of the carriage, talking quietly to each other.

  They journeyed through a flat, uninteresting landscape, where arable farmland and small factory estates existed uneasily together. The route seemed to be sparsely wooded, and the trees stunted and twisted. A phrase came into Box’s mind as he looked at the scene from the carriage window: ruined woodlands. He’d seen that expression once, in a poem. The flying gold of the ruined woodlands. Maybe it was by Tennyson.

  The train stopped at a small station, the soldiers alighted, and a ticket inspector in a very smart uniform climbed up into the carriage. There was a little stir as everybody produced their tickets, and the inspector passed along the gangway, punching a hole in each ticket as it was presented to him. Colonel Kershaw handed their four tickets to the smart man, who punched them, and gave them back. Kershaw made some comment in German, and the man replied, clicking his heels and bowing stiffly before passing further along the gangway.

  ‘What did you say, sir?’ whispered Box.

  ‘I said it was warm for the time of the year, and he agreed that it was.’

  As the four men were virtually cocooned in their island of facing seats, they began to speak to each other in English. None of the other passengers seemed to notice.

  ‘This place that we’re going to, sir,’ said Box, ‘Posen. What kind of a place is it? These foreign towns all sound so sinister, don’t they?’

  Colonel Kershaw smiled.

  ‘Well, Mr Box,’ he said, ‘it’s all a matter of familiarity, I suppose. Posen sounds quite harmless to me. Why not ask Mr Kolinsky? He’ll know more about Posen than I do.’

  The interpreter leaned forward in his seat. His eyes glowed with a light of interest.

  ‘Posen, Mr Box,’ he said, ‘is one of the finest provincial capitals in Germany, with a famous town hall, and many thriving industries. There is talk of a magnificent Royal residence to be built there for the enjoyment of the Kaiser and his Empress. Posen is where my own ancestors are buried, in the Cemetery of St Martin.’

  ‘So it was Polish at one time?’ asked Box. ‘I gather from your name, Mr Kolinsky, that you are yourself of Polish origin.’

  ‘Posen, or Poznan, as we Poles call it, was the seat of the early Polish rulers, but it has changed hands many times over the centuries. The Swedes captured it in 1703, the French came in 1803, and it was ceded to P
russia in 1815. The whole of this area, Mr Box, is a melting-pot, waiting to boil over. Posen is a city populated by Poles who are forbidden by edict to speak their own language. German is fast becoming compulsory as the only language in the province. The Germans are storing up a nightmare of revolution for themselves in Posen—’

  ‘That’s enough, Kolinsky,’ said Kershaw. ‘It’s quite possible that there are some English-speakers in this carriage. If people start to notice us, it could prove very inconvenient. Remember, we are travelling on false papers.’

  The interpreter blushed, and lowered his eyes. He’s allowed his feelings to get the better of him, thought Box. And I don’t blame him, either. Thank goodness England had always been English, and was likely to remain so!

  It was hot in the train, and the stunted landscape seen from the windows seemed to be lying exhausted in the summer heat. Box dozed off for a while, lulled asleep by the regular rhythm of the wheels. He could hear the quiet murmur of conversation, and was dimly aware of the aroma of drifting tobacco smoke.

  He was jerked awake as the train halted at another little station, which proclaimed itself to be Niederstadt. The ticket collector alighted – and Major Ronald Blythe stepped up into the carriage. Surely he was still dreaming? No, it was Major Blythe in the flesh, making a show of greeting the colonel as though he were a long-lost friend.

  ‘My dear man!’ cried Major Blythe, holding out a friendly hand to Kershaw. ‘Fancy seeing you here! Push up, won’t you, and let me sit down for a minute. I’m getting off at the next station.’

  Colonel Kershaw seemed to accept Blythe’s presence on a train hundreds of miles away from England as perfectly natural.

  ‘Why, Mr Robinson,’ he said, shaking hands with Blythe, ‘I didn’t know the firm had sent you out this far on business. Or did you come to find me specifically?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been promoted as chief salesman for Northern Germany, you see, after old Bobby Fitzgerald retired. By the way, he gave me some papers for you – said you’d want them. Diagrams of the new tractors, and things of that nature, which he’d found lying around in a safe.’

  Major Blythe took a bulky brown envelope from his pocket and handed it to Kershaw. Hearty and cheerful, rather loudly dressed in a light check suit, he looked decidedly more like a salesman than a serving officer in the British Army.

  ‘And you’re branching out into sanitary ware, I believe?’ asked Blythe. ‘You’re very wise. It’s going to be a thriving market. Well, here’s my stop. Marvellous to have seen you again. Are these your friends? How do you do? Sorry I can’t stay. Good morning!’

  Major Blythe swung down from the train on to the platform, and stood for a while waving as they began the last section of the journey to Posen. Colonel Kershaw thought: Good for him! He must have travelled like lightning across Europe by fast train to intercept me here. Sanitary ware, indeed! Cheeky man…. And that insubordinate police inspector, Bobby Fitz…. He must have undertaken his dangerous commission immediately, and with complete success. Mr Fitzgerald was going to be an invaluable asset. He would have to be cultivated, and suitably rewarded. In a dangerous world, there would always be a need for such reckless and resourceful men.

  The train drew into the main railway station of Posen towards noon, and the four men gratefully climbed down on to the track. It had been a long, tedious journey. The concourse was crowded with travellers too busy to notice four foreigners pushing their way towards one of the remoter platforms, so they arrived at the Limburg departure gate without incident. A small engine, coupled to a single coach, stood on the track with steam up.

  Colonel Kershaw handed a fresh batch of tickets to the uniformed man at the gate, who examined each one carefully before punching them all with four vicious jabs.

  ‘Change at Sheinberg for the Ten Farms,’ said the man, handing back the tickets. Box found the fact that he spoke in English rather unnerving.

  ‘We intend to go straight through to Limburg,’ Kershaw replied.

  ‘Then you’ll have to show me your military pass,’ said the man, stolidly. ‘You can’t go through to Limburg without a pass. If you’re not going to the Ten Farms, you’ll have to get off the train at Sheinberg, and walk the two miles into Limburg village.’

  The man seemed to lose interest in the matter, and retreated into his glazed booth beside the gate. Taking their cue from Kershaw, the other three followed him along the track and climbed up into the single carriage. There were no other passengers. The carriage smelt of stale tobacco smoke, and the windows were dirty. But the seats were upholstered in faded blue cloth, and the four men sank gratefully into the cushions. In a few moments a whistle sounded, and a man in railway uniform held aloft a white disc fixed to the end of a rod. The engine juddered into life, and they were soon moving out of the Posen station.

  ‘Sheinberg was an unforeseen hitch in the proceedings, gentlemen,’ said Kershaw. ‘However, it’s not really surprising. I’m told that there are only a few houses at Limburg, where the main building is the fortified railway station. It’s probably alive with German soldiers. We’ll just have to trek the couple of miles from Sheinberg to meet our contact on the outskirts of Limburg village. Limburg’s only a quarter of a mile from the Russian border, and it’s from Limburg that we shall cross discreetly into Poland.’

  ‘Why did the ticket collector speak to you in English?’ asked Box.

  ‘I suppose it’s because we look English,’ the colonel replied. ‘At least, you and I do, and Morrison there. I can’t speak for Kolinsky.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Kolinsky, smiling, ‘I grant I’m of Polish extraction, but I was born in the Isle of Dogs. So I reckon I’m as English as anyone else!’

  ‘That ticket inspector,’ Box persisted, ‘do you think he knew who we were?’

  ‘Well, anything’s possible, Mr Box,’ Kershaw replied, ‘but I think it highly unlikely. We just looked English, that’s all. Don’t look for difficulties where none exist.’

  The four men fell silent, each occupied once more with his own thoughts. Arnold Box was beginning to experience an unsettling disquiet. Colonel Kershaw was too dismissive. Why were things going so smoothly? No one had asked them for their papers, no one had subjected them to any questions. It was true that they were not travelling in an enemy country, but they were foreigners to a man, and foreigners attempting to journey into what was very obviously a restricted area. But no one had stopped them….

  Kershaw thought to himself: What is Mr Box thinking about? He looked worried. I’m glad I brought him with me on this journey. While I try to hold the whole picture of Europe in my mind, predicting its crises and their possible solutions, Box is beavering away at the minutiae of the present moment. Box’s mind supplements my own. He thinks quite differently from me, and that’s his great value. Yes, he looks worried. I’ll have to reassure him, when we get a private moment together, that everything’s going as I expected.

  Morrison, the sergeant-armourer, was preoccupied with his own professional thoughts. Why had the colonel insisted on bringing the Lee-Metford with him? He’d joked about hunting to the policeman, Inspector Box, but he’d not specified what kind of hunting the colonel liked. They were going secretly into Russia to frustrate an attempt on the life of the Tsar. Apparently, it was to be carried out either with a bomb or a fusillade. Morrison had an uneasy feeling that Colonel Kershaw had come equipped to prevent the assassination by the desperate expedient of shooting the assassin.

  The interpreter Kolinsky gazed out of the window at the Prussian countryside. The terrain this far east was flat and uninteresting, and although the soil was fertile, there was a listless air about the farms stretching on either side of the track. It was as though the malaise of the impoverished Polish peasantry had crept out beyond the Russian-Polish border to infect the German farmers. It was only an illusion, of course; the German landowners valued their lands, and what they could produce, and their tenant farmers were free citizens of the Reich. Serfdom had been
abolished in Prussia in 1807.

  The Polish aristocracy, though, were preoccupied with dreams of independence, and the plight of their peasants was very much a minor consideration. The Russian peasantry had been reduced to a position of serfdom in the seventeenth century, and their condition had been imposed by statute in 1648. When eastern Poland had fallen under the Russian yoke, the Polish peasantry joined the ranks of the serfs. Tsar Alexander II had liberated the serfs – all twenty-three million of them – and serfdom had disappeared in the Russian Empire by 1863.

  In the Polish lands beyond the Russian borders, though, serfdom remained a habit of mind, common to both magnat and peasant. It was said that after emancipation, the Russian peasant was allowed to stand up on his own two feet, while the Polish peasant remained on all fours.

  Would Poland ever be free? If it were, then it would have to look westward towards Germany, and forge strong alliances with the German Empire. Such a move would at least allow for the new Poland to progress as a modern state. It was with Germany, not Russia, that the Polish future lay.

  Meanwhile, thought Kolinsky, he had the incredible good fortune to be British, and a Londoner into the bargain. He sat back in his seat, and thought of the Isle of Dogs.

  The train arrived at Sheinberg just after two o’clock in the afternoon. The station was a single wooden building rising above the track. The village consisted of a few red-roofed cottages near the station, and a small wooden church with a tall spire. All around it lay deserted fields of wheat and barley. The four men alighted. A group of soldiers came out of the station building, and boarded the train. They were all carrying rifles, and were evidently on their way to the fortified railway station at Limburg.

  A dusty winding road led out of the village, and after Kolinsky had ascertained from the station master that it was the road to Limburg, they set out for the two-mile walk in the heat of the summer afternoon. Colonel Kershaw fell into step beside Arnold Box, while their two companions trudged on doggedly ahead. It was very quiet: there seemed to be neither man nor beast for miles around.