Blood Red, Snow White (10 page)

It was an extraordinary story, but put so simply. Almost everyone and everything else had been swept aside with each change of rule, and yet here was one young girl swimming along with the current behind her. Arthur felt a sudden sorrow for her, and put a gloved hand on her sleeve.

She looked at the hand, then shrieked.

“My tram!”

Without either of them seeing it, the tram had slid up in the wind-blown street. It began to move off, and Evgenia jumped for the running board.

“Thanks so much,” she called, but the words slipped from her mouth, as her foot slipped from the icy step.

Within a moment she was hanging from the step, the heel of one of those expensive shoes caught in the grate, her body dragging along inches from the tram’s rear wheels.

Arthur ran.

In his mind he saw the heel snap and the tram run right over her, and then his mind stopped seeing anymore.

Somehow keeping his footing, he reached her hand and pulled, felt her other hand grab his coat.

Something slipped, and then all he knew was the noise of the tram dying away. They lay in the snow for long seconds, and only then did it all become clear.

“My God,” Arthur said. He rolled over and looked at Evgenia, who sat up. She had a frown on her face like a sulky schoolgirl, and he almost laughed. Almost.

“You could have been…”

It didn’t need saying.

She stood in front of Arthur, slightly lopsided with one heel missing.

“Those,” she said, “were expensive shoes.”

Now Arthur did laugh, but offered to find a drozhka to take her home.

“You can’t do that,” she protested. “It’s far too expensive. I’ll wait for another tram.”

“I’ll get a cab and I’ll come with you to Vasilievsky. Then I’ll get it to take me home. Haven’t you had enough of trams for one night?”

“I have had enough of trams,” she said, smiling, and he took that for a yes. He went to find a cab, and as he did, he heard her say something else, though it wasn’t clear.

It might have been, “but not enough of you.” The words were lost in the evening wind.

The accident had changed things, Arthur knew that.

It had brought them closer, helped Arthur to see the real woman, the honesty in her eyes. If Trotsky had set them up, he didn’t care. He’d done him a favor.

7:20 P.M.

THE BATH IS A THIRD FULL
with the spitting hot water and now Arthur dares to let the icy cold in to mix with it. He strips absentmindedly, stirring the water with one foot, then lowers himself gingerly in as hot as he can bear it. Within seconds his skin is pink from the heat, and he feels the pain in his shoulders ease slightly.

His body relaxes, but there is no release for his mind. His soul is tired. The wave that has rolled through Russia has been easy to ride. He’s been swept along, but nonetheless there’s horror waiting just beneath the water, and every now and again, one of the horrors surfaces.

*   *   *

Almost right from the start, it was unclear whose side he was on.

He was summoned to the Smolny one day early in January, not to see Trotsky or Lenin, but another of the Bolshevik clan. Karl Radek possibly outshone his more powerful colleagues in terms of intellect, and certainly eccentricity. Arthur was shown into an office where he was greeted by a tiny man, with pointed nose and clean-shaven chin, wild and wiry hair, small round glasses, and a pipe seemingly glued to the corner of his mouth. He reminded Arthur not so much of a man as a pixie, or some sort of hobgoblin.

On the table beside him lay a collection of books, and some other items, too. Arthur immediately recognized them as his own. When he left Stockholm, he’d feared a difficult journey and had asked Vorovsky to send much of his stuff after him. Vorovsky had sent them, just not to the right person.

“You had no business to open that!” Arthur declared.

“Mr. Ransome,” he said, smiling, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Thrown off guard, Arthur returned the handshake.

“What I said to myself,” Radek went on, “is what kind of man owns such diverse and wonderful things! These books alone. What have we here?”

He began to rummage, like a squirrel foraging, all the time a generous smile on his face.

“Aha! Shakespeare! So I know the man is a good Englishman. “To be or not to be,” yes? “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of…”

He broke off.

“But why am I reciting Shakespeare to you? You are the Englishman!”

He laughed.

“I am a Pole,” he said. “I’m a Pole who speaks Polish badly because I talked too much German when I was in exile with Mr. Lenin and the others. But when I speak Russian I sound Polish, do I not? I speak French, too, but abominably. Hmm. But we were talking about you. How rude of me. Here we have a chess set, with folding board and miniature pieces. Clever. So we know the owner has a keen and shrewd mind.”

Arthur was pleased to see it again, but didn’t assume his things would be returned.

“And here we have some more books. One on chess. Interesting. Does this mean that our man is modest; willing to admit that there might always be something new to learn? That he doesn’t know it all. I think perhaps this is true? And what about these books? One on fishing. So what. So a man who can fish might be able to provide for himself when those around him are starving. And a book on navigation. Navigation. You are learning the rudiments of how to travel across the sea unaided. Does this perhaps tell me that the man is engaged in certain hidden activities? That he is a spy?”

“No,” Arthur protested.

Radek laughed again.

“No,” he said. “No. I know you are not yet a spy.”

There it was again. Language is a subtle but vicious killer. What did he mean by “yet”?

“Would you like to take your things away or shall we have someone bring them to your apartment?”

“You mean I can have them back?”

“Certainly. What would I want with a book on fishing? And Shakespeare, I know my Shakespeare well enough, I think.”

Arthur hesitated, looking at the contents of the parcel strewn across the table.

“Would you mind sending it on?”

“Of course. And now Mr. Ransome, can I offer you some tea?”

He accepted, and soon the parcel was forgotten. As they spoke Arthur saw why he had opened it; there was no great sinister meaning behind it, but simply that Radek was a small boy in a big world, curious and inquisitive. Arthur stayed far longer than he realized, and fell into a long conversation about everything from chess to revolution, but it was another small warning, Arthur knew. Nothing he did, nothing he said, nothing he owned, would be his alone.

*   *   *

He started working for Buchanan, the British Ambassador. He’d been asked to find out what he could about Trotsky, and he did, reporting back in good faith. And if he learned anything interesting from Evgenia about her employers, well, that simply showed that he understood the game.

But if Arthur started to understand what he was doing, others did not.

He was in Buchanan’s office, a few days before the kind old Ambassador left Russia for good. A week later and Lockhart arrived, and then things changed entirely, but that day, Arthur was reporting to Buchanan, as usual.

Just then the door flew open, and an officer burst in.

He pointed at Arthur.

“You, sir,” he declared, his nostrils quivering, “should be shot!”

Arthur had never met him before but knew him by sight. General Knox was the British Military Attaché to Petrograd.

Buchanan raised a hand to try to stop Knox, but he was in no mood to stop.

“Sir George, I’ve been watching this man, and his … activities. He is a Red! He has been consorting with the Bolsheviks, and should be considered a traitor. He ought to be dealt with as such!”

Arthur tried to protest his innocence, but Knox ignored him completely apart from occasionally waving a finger in his direction. Buchanan, meanwhile, already weakened by his illness, was in no condition for a fight, and simply waited for the storm to pass.

Knox ended his tirade and looked expectantly at Buchanan, like a dog waiting for a bone. Arthur would have found him comical, but he knew that he was the bone Knox wanted.

Buchanan lifted his gaze from his desk to Knox.

“General,” he said, “Mr. Ransome is an agent of the British Embassy, and therefore the British government. Please be good enough to treat him accordingly. You may go.”

It was over. Knox stood rooted to the spot briefly and then, as the color rose in his cheeks, spun on his heel and slammed the door behind him.

Buchanan forced a weak smile on Arthur.

“Talk to Trotsky, find out what he really wants. Do your job. Then come and tell me.”

Arthur nodded, and did as he was told, but it all came to nothing.

Next day, Buchanan left for England, and a week later, Lockhart arrived to act in his place.

7:55 P.M.

THE COLD TAP DRIPS IN THE BATH,
almost hypnotising Arthur. He stirs himself and stretches his long legs, resting his feet on the wall above the taps. His thoughts drift some more and a face comes to mind.

Lockhart.

When Arthur learned he’d returned to Russia, he was surprised, to put it mildly. Lockhart had been sent home from his position in Moscow in disgrace. There’d been an affair with a Russian Jewess; she was married, and then again, so was he. The official story was ill health, returning home to rest, honorable leave of absence. The usual humbug, but Arthur knew the truth, had had the gossip from the Embassy corridors, that Lockhart had been a bad boy. It wasn’t even so much that he’d had an affair, it was that he hadn’t been able to keep it a secret.

For a man in his profession, that was a crime in itself.

It was unforgivable.

*   *   *

And yet, he had been forgiven, because he came back to Petrograd in January. The Embassy was always a good standby for a decent plate of food; that was something Arthur had learned. As things got harder through that winter, he found his visits coincided more and more often with lunch.

On the prowl one day for food and news, in that order, he got more than he expected.

Lockhart.

Arthur’s heart rose the moment he saw him. He rushed over, shaking the Scot warmly by the hand.

“Steady on, Ransome,” he said, laughing.

“It’s so good to see a friendly face,” Arthur said. “Everyone else has left.”

“And I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me, eh?”

Arthur shrugged.

“Nothing surprises me anymore. After the Ambassador left I didn’t know who would replace him.”

“Oh, I’m not replacing him, he was an Ambassador, whereas I…” he paused. “If I’m replacing anyone, I’m replacing you.”

He smiled.

“Don’t worry, I’ve no interest in journalism. I’ve been sent here as head of a special mission. To make and keep contact with Trotsky and the Bolsheviks. Something that seems to have been your sole responsibility up till now.”

“I see. Sir George didn’t mention you were coming.”

“Would it have been any of your business? Anyway, he may not have known. I was only told myself just before Christmas.”

“You knew he was ill.”

“Yes,” Lockhart nodded. “Saw him in Norway on my way out here. The cruiser that sent me here was to collect him and take him home. He seemed pretty badly off, but you know, you could see he was relieved to be out of Russia.”

“It does that to some people.”

“Listen, Ransome, it’s lunchtime, fancy a bite to eat?”

Arthur smiled to himself, delighted his little scheme had worked again.

“I have to admit,” he said, “The food here…”

“No,” Lockhart said, quietly. “Not here. Let’s go out. Yes?”

*   *   *

They walked through the city’s ice-bound streets, trying and failing to find a restaurant that was both open and with the appearance of somewhere they might actually want to eat. Arthur mildly cursed himself for the presumption that he was going to get his teeth into Embassy food again. Eventually, they stumbled across a place. A vegetarian restaurant, called “I Eat Nobody,” it was the wit of the name as much as anything else that took them inside.

“Probably the safest place to eat anyway,” Arthur said as they sat down. “There are some bad stories circulating about the little meat that is available. Species-wise.”

“Species-wise?” Lockhart grimaced.

Arthur nodded.

“Species-wise.”

Over bowls of steaming borsch Lockhart told Arthur about his mission.

“The government still isn’t prepared to recognize the Bolsheviks officially. The attitude is still one of calculated indifference. The policy is that there is no policy. But, there are those, and Mr. Lloyd George is among them, who have read the newspaper reports of certain journalists,” he looked straight into Arthur’s eyes, “and feel that there should be some kind of relationship with the Bolsheviks.”

He took a mouthful of the beetroot soup while Arthur pondered the fact that the Prime Minister of Great Britain had actually been influenced by something he’d written.

“I’m here to head up a mission of official contact with Messrs. Trotsky and Lenin. Unofficially, of course.”

Arthur smiled.

“Naturally. Which rather makes me redundant as a go-between.”

“Officially yes. But unofficially, I…”

He stopped, and put his spoon down.

“Arthur, you have to tell me something, and you have to tell me straight. Are you a Bolshevik?”

Arthur’s laugh made the few other people in the near-empty restaurant look sharply around.

“Ransome,” Lockhart said. “An answer, if you please.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. No. No, of course, I’m not a Bolshevik. I’m a journalist. It’s my job to talk to them. By that logic…”

“Fair enough. I believe you, but this is a strange world we are living in, and not everyone is what they seem. Half the world still believes Trotsky is a German agent sent to topple Russia from the inside.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“I know it’s nonsense, but that’s not the point. It’s what people believe is true that matters, not what actually is true.”