Come into my Parlour (34 page)

Kuporovitch again began a vigorous protest but the fat Mongolian took not the slightest notice. He pressed a button on the desk, a bell shrilled, and some more armed guards came hurrying out of a room at the side of the hall. In a guttural voice he gave instructions to an N.C.O., then sat down to write out the receipt. He was still writing it, with Gudarniev beside him, when two of the guards placed themselves on either side of the prisoners, and at an order from the N.C.O. marched them away.

They were taken down a passage, through another heavy door beside which a sentry was lounging, and out into a big high-walled courtyard.

“Ah, now I know where we are,” Kuporovitch murmured to Gregory. “This is the old Lubianka prison, but they must have built a new office to it and that infernal Colonel brought us in that way.”

“Silence!” barked the N.C.O. “My orders are that you are not to talk,” and he prodded Kuporovitch with the barrel of his pistol.

As they proceeded, Gregory thought grimly that this must be the courtyard in which the Bolsheviks had massacred thousands of innocent men, women and children during the Revolution, for the sole crime of belonging to the educated classes.

They entered a door on the far side of the courtyard, passed another sentry and were led down a flight of iron stairs to the basement. There, the N.C.O passed on his instructions to a head warder and saw the prisoners locked into cells some distance from one another.

Both of them had hoped that they might be able to communicate with each other on the alarming turn that events had taken, if only by tapping out messages in morse on the partition of two cells; but since even this hope had been frustrated, after sitting gloomily on the edges of their beds for a time, they lay down and went to sleep.

Their sleep was fitful, not alone owing to the desperate plight in which they knew themselves to be; but also on account of the intense cold in the underground cells. Fortunately they had their furs, but, even so, after a few hours' restless dozing the cold was such that they found it unendurable to lie still any longer, and, getting up, began to stamp up and down the narrow confines of their prisons.

In due course a hunk of bread and a mug of something that passed for coffee was brought to each of them. The brown liquid was an unappetising brew, but, in spite of that, they were grateful for its warmth. A few hours later they were given a bowl of greasy stew apiece, and, still later, another mug of the coffee substitute. They then tried to get some sleep again, and were semi-comatose when they were roughly aroused and called outside by a little group of warders.

Glancing at his watch, Gregory saw that they had been incarcerated for the best part of twenty-two hours, so it was now the middle of the night again. He wondered miserably if an order had just arrived for them to be shot.

To his immense relief they were not halted in the sinister courtyard but taken across it, and through to the main hall in which they had been received. They were then taken up in a lift to the second floor and marched into a large, comfortably furnished office. In it were four men.

One of them, a grey-haired fellow in a smart uniform with silver rank badges, who appeared to be the prison commandant, was seated behind a heavy desk. Marshal Voroshilov occupied an armchair to one side of him, while Colonel Gudarniev and another officer, who, it transpired, was an interpreter, were standing side by side behind the Marshal.

The guards were ordered out of the room. Voroshilov lit a cigarette and began to address Kuporovitch. Evidently he had given instructions to the interpreter beforehand, as, after each sentence he paused, and the officer translated it into German for Gregory's benefit. The Marshal said:

“You two beauties have landed yourselves in a fine mess. One of you, I don't know which, had the bright idea of changing a drink that my servant handed to the
Herr Baron
last night for mine, so that I drank it instead. I don't see how you could possibly have known at the time what was in it, but later it must have been clear to you that the drink had been doctored with our Truth drug.”

“I can only offer my profound apologies, sir,” Gregory said quickly. “I changed the drinks, and I did so only because I felt certain that your servant had forced that particular drink on me.”

“Did you think I meant to poison you?”

“No. Even the idea of your drugging me didn't seem to make sense. I could see no earthly reason why you should wish to either poison or dope me. If I had known then what the drug was I should naturally have seen the reason for your wanting me to drink it. But as I didn't know, the whole thing seemed quite pointless. My impulse was rather like ducking when one thinks one is being shot at; I simply changed the drinks over on the spur of the moment.”

“Well, in this case you ducked too successfully,
Herr Baron
. If you had left well alone, and it was the truth that you were telling me last night, your story would have been exactly the same, drug or no drug, and no harm would have come to you. But as it is, your act has placed you in possession of information which, whether you are an honest man or not, is more dangerous than poison.”

“You must admit that it's not altogether my fault,” Gregory argued, risking a mild grin.

“No,” the Marshal admitted, “and I can see the funny side of it. As a matter of fact, that liquid preparation of the drug is quite a new thing. One of our scientists gave me a little as a present with the idea that it might be amusing to give it to somebody at a party. But I hardly cared to play that sort of joke on one of my friends, and I had forgotten all about the stuff until you turned up last night. Then it occurred to me that it would be interesting to try it out on you, and learn just how much of this conspiracy to liquidate Hitler is the truth. The joke, of course, turned out to be on me; but there is a saying that ‘he who laughs last, laughs best.' ”

“I certainly don't regard it as a laughing matter,” Gregory assured him hastily.

“No,” said the Marshal drily, “you have no cause to—now.”

“But, Marshal, has any real harm been done?” reasoned Gregory. “After all, the information you gave me was essential to the successful carrying out of the plan I put before you. The fact that you gave it to me unwittingly is surely of no serious account. If you had not done so, one way or the other, the whole point of my coming to Russia would have been lost. I am no more a danger to you now, if you allow me to go back to Germany, than if you had told me all you did of your own free will.”

“That remains to be seen. In any case I should not have talked to you as freely as I did, and certainly not before having found out much more about you. However, that oversight can fortunately be remedied. It will be doubly interesting now to ascertain just how much of your story really is true.”

As he finished speaking Voroshilov took a small phial from his pocket. Two glasses and a carafe of water had been placed ready on the desk. He poured a little of the brownish fluid from the phial into each of the glasses, added some water and said:

“Come along, both of you. Drink up.”

Gregory was still cold from the long hours spent in the chilly cell, but he felt the perspiration break out in little beads on his forehead. He had no doubt at all what was in the phial. It was the remainder of the drug, and the Marshal meant to play tit for tat.

He wondered wildly what he would say under the influence of the drug. Then, if he ought to refuse to drink it, and accept the obvious, although unannounced, alternative, of being led down to the courtyard and shot. If he did drink it and the stuff made him answer all questions without the least reserve he could hardly expect much mercy. But one swift consoling thought came to him. It flashed into his mind how
wise old Sir Pellinore had been always to insist that he should work on his own. He had never been a member of the official British Secret Service. He knew no one in it and nothing whatever of the methods used. At least, even if they poured the drug into him by force, they would never get any information about that.

Kuporovitch had already stepped forward. With a faint grin he shrugged his broad shoulders and picked up one of the glasses. He knew perfectly well that by drinking it he would give away the tissue of lies he had told, but he was convinced that it was now only a matter of hours, or perhaps only moments, before he would be shot in any case. With Russian fatalism he was quite prepared to die, and it appealed to his sense of humour that he should provide his old friend Clim with half an hour's fun before doing so.

Gregory was still frantically trying to think what he would give away that might compromise British interests with the U.S.S.R. The reason for his mission must come out, of course, but that was entirely unofficial, since Sir Pellinore, who had sent him, was a private individual. Moreover, he would not involve the British Minister in Moscow, as Sir Stafford Cripps knew nothing about it. Yet he was still terrified lest something that should remain a secret would come out. He had so little time to think and, with that awful thought agitating his mind, he took a step forward to grab his friend's arm.

But Kuporovitch was, after all, a Russian, and it had not even occurred to him that he might damage British interests. He felt certain, too, that if they refused to drink the potion would be forced upon them both; and although he would never willingly have let Gregory down, he saw no reason to suppose that he would compromise him any more than his friend would compromise himself.

His arm jerked up; Gregory's outstretched hand missed it by an inch, and in another second Kuporovitch had swallowed the draught. Gregory saw that his own scruples were now quite pointless. The two of them had been together ever since they had left Kandalaksha eighteen months before, so there was no point in the one making a fighting attempt to preserve secrets which the other would now, inevitably, give away. Picking up the other glass, he drank the sweetish brown liquid.

“Good,” said Voroshilov, pointing to two chairs near a big porcelain stove in a corner of the room. “Now you can go and sit over there and smoke a cigarette, while we give the drug a little time to work.”

“I'm afraid I smoked the last one I had on me hours ago,” said Gregory.

As the interpreter translated, the grey-haired Commandant pushed forward a box that was on his desk and motioned them to help themselves.

Having thanked him and lit up they went over to the stove and, grateful for its warmth, settled themselves as near it as they could. Voroshilov, meanwhile, had turned to Gudarniev and said: “Let me have that analysis of the shell position, Ivan. I'll run through it while we are waiting.”

The Colonel produced some papers from a brief-case he was carrying and the Marshal set to work upon them, making pencil notes here and there in the margins.

Gregory and Stefan were now entirely concerned with trying to analyse their own feelings. For some moments neither of them were aware of any difference in their mental or physical reactions, but they waited with a mixture of anxiety and interest to see what would happen.

Gradually the anxiety faded from their minds. The warmth from the stove was very pleasant. It seemed to them both that their pulses were beating faster, but in spite of that they felt comfortably relaxed and filled with a strange sense of well-being. For the best part of the past twenty-four hours they had been acutely conscious that the next hour might prove their last, but now they were no longer worried about that. After a time they forgot all about it; then, when Gregory made a fresh effort to think of things that he ought to try to prevent himself from talking about, he found that he could not do so. With a sudden sense of panic he realised that his mind was becoming hazy, and that he could no longer remember events clearly, even in the immediate past. Then the sense of panic left him and he became possessed with a strange, happy exhilaration. He knew vaguely that his conscious mind was slipping and that the subconscious was taking charge. But that did not now seem to matter. All idea of resistance left him, and was replaced by a happy docility which made him as incapable of co-ordinating his thoughts as though he were in an opium dream.

The Marshal finished with his papers and said: “Now let us talk again. Bring your chairs over here.”

His voice and that of the interpreter came to them quite clearly. They stood up at once and obeyed. As they sat down again in front of the desk both smiled amicably, thinking what a fine fellow he was and how much they wanted him, and everyone else, to think well of them.

He looked first at Kuporovitch and enquired: “What was your reason for leaving the Soviet Union? I would like you to tell me about it again.”

“Well, Clim, it was this way.” Kuporovitch answered with easy familiarity. “You know my history. You know that as a young man I was a Czarist officer and that I only became a Bolshevik through force of circumstances. Before the war and the revolution came, life was good for young fellows like myself. We used to stay at the big
houses where there were plenty of good horses and pretty girls to flirt with; good food, good wine, shooting in the autumn, bear hunts in the winter, and all that sort of thing. We were free men and we could even say that the Little Father and his Ministers were fools, if we thought it. But best of all, on our long leaves we were free to travel. I used to go to Paris and Monte Carlo every year, and what a time we had! You'd have loved Paris, Clim. You were always one for a interesting life when you could get it, and I bet you would never have come back until your money ran out. The lights of the cafés in the Rue Pigale made the place like a fairyland. You'd have loved the Moulin Rouge, the Rat Mort and all those places. At the Abbaye Thélême, we used to get the girls dancing on the tables without any drawers on, while we drank wine out of their slippers. Champagne was only a few roubles a bottle in those days, and at Voisin's or Larue's, for a golden louis d'or, you could get the sort of dinner you've never had the chance of eating in your life. Then in the daytime there were the races at Auteuil and Longchamp, and drives in the Bois, and boating parties at St. Cloud. And always there were girls—scores of them—beautiful women exquisitely gowned and perfumed; lovely as spring itself in their silks and laces and jewels; real girls whose whole life was love and laughter—the sort that we have not seen in Russia for nearly three generations.”