Blood Red, Snow White (15 page)

I got to Stockholm safely enough, but then things began to blacken.

Evgenia was not there. I had thought she would beat me, having left first, but day after day went by and there was still no word from her. I called at the Bolshevik Embassy regularly, asking if they had news of Vorovsky’s party, but all they could tell me was that they had reached Berlin.

With every day that passed I grew more and more worried. And, with every day, more questions were raised, but there were no answers.

I needed to work. I had strung the
Daily News
along, and they were growing impatient. I needed to start writing for them again, regularly, or they’d pull the plug and I’d be back in London before Evgenia ever made it to Stockholm.

I went to the British Legation to talk to Sir Esmé about whether I could be allowed to telegram from Sweden, which was, after all, neutral territory, but something had changed. No one smiled; no one welcomed me. Even Sir Esmé, whose children I had once entertained, dealt with me in an offhand manner.

I held my peace for a while, and was rewarded by permission to resume life as a correspondent for the
Daily News
.

There was a condition however. While I was discussing the matter with Sir Esmé, there was a knock at the door and in came an officer. It took me a moment to recognize him.

“Ransome,” he said, holding out his hand.

Then I remembered: Major Scale. The last time I’d seen him was in Petrograd, in 1917.

“Major,” I said. “How can I help you?”

“It’s I that can help you, I think,” he said.

“We’re going to get you back at work, Ransome,” Sir Esmé said. “Sending your reports. To make things easier, you’ll give them to Major Scale and he’ll have them telegraphed for you.”

“To make things easier?” I asked, slowly.

“Yes. To make things easier. And more … secure. Major Scale is with the Intelligence Service. Your communications will be more secure this way.”

“I see,” I said. “From who…?”

Scale lost his temper then and told me I was bloody lucky to be allowed to send anything anywhere, but Sir Esmé soon told him to be quiet.

“It will be better for everyone this way. That’s all.”

I agreed, with no further argument. I’d just have to be more careful about what I said, that was all. It meant I’d keep my job, and be able to stay in Stockholm. I went back to the small house I was renting, out on the sea lanes at Igelboda, and brooded, thinking about Evgenia, about where she might be, and what she might be doing.

A day later I found out why the mood toward me had soured. It was Lockhart.

As I learned what had happened, my heart beat fast and light.

Damn it, I remember thinking. Damn it, damn it.

Damn me.

God damn me for a fool.

*   *   *

The first I heard was a rumor on the street that Lenin had been assassinated. It had taken a few days to reach Stockholm, but the British Legation had obviously known about it for days. As soon as I heard I ran to see if they had further news.

Sir Esmé showed me an imported Russian paper, which had arrived that morning.

A young Jewish woman had fired two shots at Lenin at point-blank range. He was still alive, but badly wounded, perhaps fatally. He had taken one bullet in the lung, the other in the neck, and was in a coma. He was alive, but his chances of surviving were less than good.

There was more news, from Petrograd. Two days earlier the head of the Cheka there had been assassinated. There had been riots and the British Embassy was attacked. Cromie, our naval attaché, who had once given me a flag with which to claim an embassy, had resisted the intrusion and, after killing a Cheka commissar, had been shot dead.

Another man I counted a friend, gone.

Meanwhile in Moscow, and later the same night as the attempt on Lenin’s life, Lockhart and his second in command at the mission, Hicks, had been arrested. Lockhart had been accused of masterminding a massive plot against the Bolsheviks.

Sir Esmé nodded at the Bolshevik newspaper in my hands.

“There,” he said, “what do you make of that?”

The newspaper made lurid work of the story. I knew ninety percent of it would probably be lies, but that meant ten percent was true, and which, I wondered, was that ten percent? The “Lockhart Plot” accused Robert of plotting with anti-revolutionary forces to kill Lenin and Trotsky, to set up a military dictatorship, and of planning the destruction of numerous railway bridges in order to bring Petrograd and Moscow to their knees through starvation.

It had all been a trap. There had been no Latvian officers, or if there had been, they had no intention of defecting to the anti-Bolshevik camp. It had been a honey trap, and Lockhart had walked straight into it.

And I had nearly followed him.

*   *   *

I swallowed hard and at that moment did not dare look Sir Esmé in the eye. I had never mentioned to Evgenia what Robert had wanted me to do. She’d been ill, and besides … Besides, I admitted to myself, there was still the question of loyalties. Her loyalties. Not for the first time it crossed my mind that perhaps I was being taken for a fool, and that, if I had told her, I might now be in the Kremlin, too.

I stared at the paper, pretending to read, but taking none of it in. The words blurred before my eyes and swam across the page, but then I saw another name I recognized. Reilly.

Sidney Reilly figured in the accounts of the plot, too. I had never met him, but Lockhart had told me about him. Could he have dragged Robert into something that was nothing to do with him?

The same thought had obviously occurred to Sir Esmé.

“Lockhart’s no murderer,” he said. “Nor in the business of paying people to murder on his behalf.”

“No,” I agreed, though did he know, as I did, that Lockhart was a spy of some sort?

“Indeed, Ransome, but then, people are not always what they seem.”

Involuntarily, I smiled. How many times Lockhart had told me the very same thing.

“Is something funny?” Sir Esmé asked.

“No, not at all. I just…” I paused. “Sir Esmé, what you say is true. Sometimes people are not what they seem, and I think I may be a victim of such thinking.”

“Really? How so?”

“It seems that since my arrival in Stockholm I have been under suspicion. I don’t know why. Though I might guess.”

I threw the paper onto his desk.

Sir Esmé pushed his chair back and came around the desk to me. He perched on the corner of it and spoke quietly.

“And
if
you were to guess, what would you say?”

“I would say that people are suspicious of me because I know the Bolsheviks. I have spent time with them. That much is true. I even like some of them, though others are more small-minded than it’s possible to imagine. And I think that because I left Moscow immediately before they were all arrested, it’s thought that I had something to do with it, or, at the very least, that I knew about it and did nothing to warn my friends, my compatriots. That’s what I’d guess.”

“Very well, you have said it. And I may tell you that you’re right. That’s precisely what people are saying, and since you’ve worked this out, then why shouldn’t I join them and think it the truth?”

“Because I did nothing!” I said, too loud. Sir Esmé tried to shush me. “I knew nothing about the invasion of Archangel, and that’s why the Bolsheviks had all the British in Moscow arrested. How could I have known about that when even Lockhart didn’t know it was going to happen?”

“Fair point.”

“Yes, it is. And furthermore, do you really think that had I known everyone was going to be arrested that I’d have said nothing to him? Robert is my friend. I told him the show was over, but that was only my opinion. All I meant was that I was leaving. He knew that.”

He stood again, silent for a time while I tried to calm down. Anger would get me nowhere.

He turned back to me and smiled, though it was thin and unconvincing.

“I want to believe you. To be honest, I don’t think you have it in you to lie about something like this.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“There are some who wouldn’t think it was a compliment.” He laughed. “To survive in this game you need to be able to practice deceptions of all kinds.”

“Maybe so. But I don’t count myself as part of this game.”

He seemed affronted.

“Is that so? So you’re above the rest of us are you? A journalist’s independence perhaps, free of concern for anything but a story and a good headline.”

“That’s not the case.”

“No? Where do your loyalties lie, Ransome? To Britain? Or to the Bolsheviks? Or just to yourself?”

I stood. There was no point arguing. And though all I could do was worry about Evgenia, I could help Robert.

“No,” I said. “There are people I care for. People who have died, and I could do nothing about it. I’ve lost people too, and it was my fault. Now I can’t be with them. But there are still those I love, who I will protect for all I am worth.”

“That’s a fine speech,” he said, and as I met his eyes I knew he was being honest. “But what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to save Lockhart’s skin, if I can. And then maybe you’ll know where my loyalties lie.”

4

I WROTE A LONG TELEGRAM
to Radek, asking, urging, begging him to see that Lockhart’s execution would serve the Bolsheviks nothing. Would only distance them from contact with the Allies. They already had Cromie’s blood on their hands; I urged him not to add to the list of the dead.

Even as I wrote, I knew one thing. I knew that the telegram would be intercepted and read by the British Intelligence Services, and I knew it would only confirm their opinion that I was a friend and accomplice of the Bolsheviks.

But I didn’t care. I couldn’t care, not while Robert was rotting in some cell in Moscow.

I sent the telegram.

Then, there was nothing to do, but wait.

5

THE LEAVES ON THE TREE WERE RUSTLING.

The strands of my life were rubbing against one another.

I can see that now, now that the years have rolled on, the leaves have fallen and I have had a chance to pick over them as they lie on the ground.

I was waiting.

The days dragged by, and I sat on the porch at Igelboda, watching the sea lanes, watching and waiting for boats to come in. I smoked my pipe, and I wrote letters home. It had been months since I had heard from anyone in England.

It was so very lovely, that view from the porch, across the bay, but I never saw it once, not until the day I heard footsteps on the gravel path beside the house.

Evgenia saw me the same moment I saw her, and dropped her bags.

She ran to me laughing and all I could do was laugh back at her.

“What?” I said after a while. “What happened?”

She laughed some more.

“I didn’t hear a thing from you,” I said. “I had no idea … How did you know I was here?”

“Arthur, it’s been such a journey. We were stuck in Berlin for weeks. Then finally we were off. But I sent you a wire to say I was coming.”

“I never got it,” I said. “My God, I’ve been so worried.”

I held her tight to me again, laughing tears of relief and of joy, then leaned back from her slightly, my hands on her hips. I stared deep into her eyes. Something in them spoke of the distance there had been between us; the time we’d been apart. It frightened me. Even though the distance and the time had vanished, the fear that I might have lost her forever lingered in me.

“But how…?”

“How did I know you were here?”

She smiled.

“Arthur, you think you are so unimportant, that no one could be bothered with you, but you are the talk of Stockholm; the mysterious Englishman who arrives from Red Russia … And besides which, I went to the British Legation and they told me where to find you.”

Now it was my turn to smile.

“I needn’t have worried,” I said, “you are far too clever to need me to worry about you.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but I like you to worry about me. Oh! I forgot, there was a letter waiting for you at the Legation. Here.”

She fished in her coat pockets and pulled out a slightly crumpled envelope.

“It’s from England,” she said, as if that were something ever so suspicious.

“It’s from my mother,” I said, as soon as I saw the handwriting. “Do you know this is the first letter I’ve had from her since January.”

“I like the house, Arthur,” she said, looking at the garden and the bay beyond it. “We can make this our home, but first, we are on our honeymoon!”

She went over to her cases, laughing to herself, looking over her shoulder at me, and smiling. It was perfect. She was perfect. Unable to take my eyes off her for long, I watched as she picked her things up and brought them up to the house.

I opened the letter.

I was about to read it out loud, but the words died in my mouth. There are moments when you see that something awful is about to happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it, something terrible that you want with all your heart to be a lie, but you know it’s the truth.

I only had to read a few words of Mother’s letter.
My Dear Arthur. I’m so sorry. To have to tell you
 … I read no more, but dropped the letter onto the wooden boards of the porch and stared out to sea.

“Arthur!”

Evgenia saw me standing like a statue and held my hand, then saw the letter on the floor.

“Arthur? What is it? Arthur?”

“My brother,” I said. I could hear my voice as if someone else were speaking, hollow and dry. “My brother is dead.”

6

I DON’T REMEMBER
much of that evening, nor of the following day.

I was wounded by the news, struck dumb for hours before I could respond even to Evgenia’s urgent pleas for me to say something, anything, at all.

The war had taken Geoff at last, as I had always known it would. The war took my friends, and now it had taken my brother, killed somewhere in France. Only when I finally had the courage to pick up the letter and read it to the end did I learn the final bitterness.