Come into my Parlour (36 page)

“There, I'm afraid I can't agree,” Gregory protested mildly. “I was sent here simply as an independent observer. Had I got away with the material I managed to collect the relations of Britain and Russia would be greatly strengthened. The British would have far greater
confidence that, whatever reverses Russia might suffer, she was determined to fight on with them until the Nazis were finally destroyed, and the Russians would feel a far stronger bond with Britain when they saw great consignments of British tanks and aircraft reaching them. And that most satisfactory situation can still be brought about if you are prepared to release me and help me to get back to England.”

“What! Release you, now that you are in full possession of all the important secrets of Russia's future strategy.” The Marshal shook his head. “There is a limit to the trust which even the best of allies can afford to place in one another. Your Government does not trust us with information as to when and where they propose eventually to open a Second Front. Why should we trust them with our plans for ensuring the final defeat of the Germans? No. You and Kuporovitch now know far too much for it to be possible for me even to consider releasing you. I can see no alternative but to pass the death sentence on you both.”

As the Marshal paused, the hearts of the two prisoners sank. During the past few moments it had seemed that he accepted their plea of a pro-Russian motive as a justification for what they had done. But apparently their urging of extenuating circumstances, and all the weighing of pros and cons in which they had indulged, counted for nothing; as the central fact in their case had been known to him from the beginning, and he had evidently made up his mind to condemn them in advance.

Then he went on: “But you are a brave man, and you placed your life in jeopardy only through a desire to serve your country. Therefore, if you are prepared to accept my conditions, I will suspend the sentence.”

Gregory's eyes quickened with a new light. “That's very generous of you, Marshal. For my part, I will agree to any conditions short of giving you an undertaking to work against my own country.”

“You should know that I would not ask it of you,” replied Voroshilov coldly. “On the other hand, you will have to forgo any prospect of serving your country further in the present war. This is the situation. The information you have acquired must at all costs be kept secret. The easiest way to ensure that would be to have you liquidated. The only possible alternative is to hold you prisoner until the war is over. I could keep you confined in a cell here, but that would entail certain risks. A shell or a bomb might destroy a part of the prison, thus enabling you to escape in the resulting confusion. If that happened you would almost certainly attempt to get away through the German lines, and might be captured there. Again, one must envisage the possibility that the Germans may take Leningrad. As long as I live I
shall never surrender. But I might be killed and, even if I am not, such immensely superior forces might be brought against me that our defences would be overwhelmed, and what was left of the city occupied. Once more in the ensuing confusion you might fall into the hands of the enemy.”

He lit a cigarette and continued: “Therefore, I must get you out of the city, to some part of the Soviet Union where it is impossible for you to be captured by the Germans. I can have you flown to a remote prison in Siberia. The death sentence is only suspended, you will remember, and any attempt to escape would result in its immediate execution. It is extremely difficult, but not absolutely impossible, to escape from such places. In consequence, my conditions are that, if I suspend your sentence, you will give me the additional guarantee for your security of your word of honour that in no circumstances will you attempt to escape; and you will also give me your word that while you are in prison you will not communicate anything that you have learned from me to any living person. Do you agree?”

Gregory barely hesitated. If he gave his word he felt that he would have to keep it. That would mean not only that his mission would remain uncompleted, but also that he would be out of the war for good. Yet the alternative was a bullet, and not just the possibility of a bullet a month hence, or in a few days' time, but the definite certainty of a bullet in the next half-hour. Not an hour would be given him to try to think out a way of escape; no second chance to alter his mind. He must give his parole now, at once, or die.

“Yes,” he said, “I accept your conditions and give you my word of honour to stick to them.”

All this time Voroshilov had been addressing Gregory, who had formed the impression that his case was being dealt with separately, and that the conditions applied only to him. The Marshal's look now shifted to Kuporovitch, and Gregory gave a quick glance sideways at him too. He knew that the Russian's case must be far worse than his own, in the Marshal's eyes, and felt that he must make every effort to save his friend.

Before Voroshilov could speak again he said: “I am in no position to make conditions on my side, sir. But I do want you to know that Kuporovitch was led into this thing entirely by me. That is true from the very beginning, when we first met at Kandalaksha. It is true that he was already toying with the idea of leaving Soviet Russia—but only toying with it; and I doubt very much if he would ever actually have done so if I had not come on the scene. It was I who persuaded him to leave and I did so because I felt that he would be of great help to me in my own work against the Germans. That had definitely proved the
case, and I—well—I don't think I want to accept my life if you will not also give him his.”

From having remained silent for a long time, Kuporovitch suddenly burst into a spate of words:

“
Sacré nom
, but this is absurd! Do not believe him, Marshal! He does not know what he is talking about! I may not be an intellectual, but I am no child to be led. What I did, I did of my own free will. He is lying now, out of friendship; but I will not have it. I deserve to die, and I am not afraid of death. I insist that you ignore——”

“Silence!” barked the Marshal, cutting him short. “I am dealing with this matter, not either of you!”

He lit another cigarette and went on more quietly: “It is a fine thing to see the loyalty of good comrades. There is nothing finer in this world. But in this case the efforts of you both to protect one another were unnecessary. I had already made up my mind about Stefan Kuporovitch.” His glance shifted to Gregory.

“He may, perhaps, never have told you of it, and it is praiseworthy in him that he should not have recalled the affair in an attempt to influence my judgment now; but many years ago, in the old war when we were fighting the White reactionaries together, he once saved me from being cut down by a Cossack. It is to his strong right arm that I owe the fact that I lived to become a Marshal of the Republic.”

Kuporovitch shrugged and smiled awkwardly. “Oh, it was nothing, Clim. You mean when we broke Deniken's army at Novocherkassk, don't you? But it all occurred in a mêlée, and it was the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone, in any battle.”

“Nevertheless, one does not forget such things,” Voroshilov replied. “And in return, I am prepared to give you your life on the same conditions as I have just given Mr. Sallust his.”

“Why, that's mighty generous of you!” Kuporovitch laughed suddenly. “I must confess that I never expected to get out of this place alive. Of course I'll promise not to try to escape, and I won't breathe a word to anyone.”

“You will not write it either, or seek in any way to communicate any message, however seemingly harmless, to anyone at all,” added the Marshal with a sudden access of caution.

“I promise,” nodded Kuporovitch cheerfully.

“That applies to you, too.” Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “It is implied in the undertaking you have already given me. Is that understood?”

“Yes, I agree,” Gregory said, concealing his reluctance to concede this last promise. His agile brain had already been at work while the Marshal was talking to Kuporovitch, and it had occurred to him that
somehow, some way, he might just possibly be able to get a message through to Sir Pellinore simply saying: “Am a prisoner in Siberia, but mission successful, go ahead.” It would not have carried one hundredth part of the weight of the personal report that had he been free to return he could now have made, but it would have been better than nothing, and would not have contravened the promise he had made not to disclose Russia's future strategy. Now, the last hope was gone. His life was safe, but he was committed to remain as silent as the grave—in fact to pass into oblivion—until the end of the war.

Voroshilov looked from one to the other of them and said: “I would add only one thing. Since you have faced peril together and have this strong bond of friendship, whatever your political ideologies may be, I hope that when the war is over you will use your appreciation of one another as individuals to bring your two countries closer together, in order that the fruits of victory may not be lost.”

He signed to the prison commandant, who pressed his bell, and the guards came in. The two prisoners thanked the Marshal again for giving them their lives, and were marched back to their cells.

Kuporovitch lay down on his bed and gazed at the ceiling. He could still hardly realise that not only would he be alive tomorrow and the day after, but probably, all being well, for years to come. The idea of being sent to Siberia had no terrors for him. It was no colder there than it had been at Kandalaksha; and although it did not sound so good to be a prisoner as the governor of a fortress, the former rôle had certain compensations. In a political prison there would be no hard labour, but indefinite leisure to think and plan for the future, and probably quite a passable library of books to read. In any case, unless a prisoner was fool enough to assault a warder he was in no danger of losing his life. Whereas a Soviet Fortress Commander was never certain, from one day to the next, that a political commission might not arrive with the object of holding a court-martial on him, owing to some rumour that the Kremlin had got hold of, and having him shot.

He accepted the fact that they were debarred from completing their mission philosophically; feeling much more sorry about that on Gregory's account than on his own. From what he had seen in Britain and now knew of his own country's resources he had no doubt at all which side would win the war. The Germans would be licked to a frazzle in a year or two, then he would be able to get back to his little Madeleine.

Gregory was far from being so resigned to the fate that had befallen him. He still felt a rather breathless sensation from having so narrowly escaped paying the final penalty, but to him the idea of being incarcerated for an indefinite period seemed grim in the extreme. He
knew far more about the strength of Germany and the relative weakness of Britain than Kuporovitch, and was by no means so optimistic about a comparatively early Allied victory. He saw himself, day after day, for weeks, months, years, performing some sort of forced labour in the most miserable conditions. He would be cold, ill-clothed, ill-fed and almost certainly subject to a harsh discipline. It was a nightmare picture of a soul-destroying existence that he conjured up; yet to save his life he had readily accepted it, and, by his promise, he had definitely burned his boats so far as any attempt to escape was concerned.

The fact that he had been so astonishingly successful in his mission, yet was now unable to get away from Russia, or even to pass on to Sir Pellinore some inkling of the facts he had gathered, made him livid with rage, but he knew that there was no way out. He tried to console himself with the thought that during the past two years he had been able to do far more to damage the Nazis than most of his countrymen would have the opportunity to do, even if the war went on for another three or four years. He knew, too, that he had been fantastically lucky not to have been caught and shot long before this. Even in this last venture his luck had not entirely run out, as a prison in Siberia would be incomparably better than a Nazi concentration camp. He had been lucky, too, in having to deal with a man like Voroshilov, instead of some official of the
Ogpu
, who would most certainly have had him shot out of hand.

His recent contacts with Voroshilov had engendered in him a great admiration for the Soviet Marshal, although he felt that he had been a bit harsh in his condemnation of poor old Stefan's wish to spend his declining years in the ease and comfort still offered by the bourgeois cities of the West. After all, Stefan's talk of nights on the spree in Montmartre was mostly froth, arising from memories of a hectic youth. He was very happily married now and, given a chance to settle down, would make a respectable and useful citizen in any country of the Old World.

As an intensely strong individualist himself Gregory did not agree with much that the Marshal had inferred. The doctrine of ensuring every child a good start in life and equal opportunities was fair and right, but the intelligent and hard-working would always rise above the rest, and it did not seem to him a practical proposition that the few should be expected to devote their lives exclusively to making things easy for the majority. In time, such a system was bound to undermine the vigour of the race. If the rewards of ability and industry were to be taken from those who rose to the top they would cease to strive, and if the masses were pampered too much, they would regard protection from all the hazards of life as their right and become lazy. There was
only a limited amount of wealth in every national kitty. If it was not added to year by year by vigorous enterprise, made possible through the majority of the people doing an honest day's work, but instead, gradually drained away in bettering the condition of the masses without their making an adequate return, the nation that followed such a policy was bound to go into a decline; then, the general standard of living would fall, instead of the country becoming a Utopia, as the theorists fondly imagined.