Blood Red, Snow White (16 page)

He had been killed in January. I had not known. It had taken me over half a year to find out that my brother was dead, because no single letter had made it to Russia. And all that time I had been hurling my pointless letters out into space, to my mother, asking her to wish Geoff well, to send my love to him. All those hopes and wishes, spent on someone already dead. My heart was too sore then to admit that maybe I would send my love to him, even though he was dead. I know now of course that I will always send my love to him.

Wherever he is.

7

THE RESPONSE TO MY TELEGRAM
from Radek was not reassuring. It was impossible to recognize the hobgoblin’s usual wit and education in the perfunctory reply he gave me. He said that Lockhart was indeed being held in prison and was only not being shot to avoid giving the Allies easy propaganda.

I took a small crumb of comfort in this. If Lockhart’s name was enough to make the Bolsheviks unwilling to shoot him, that wouldn’t change quickly, and the fact that Radek had replied to me at all was a good sign; it meant they might be open to negotiate on Lockhart’s release. If I had heard nothing, I would have feared for Lockhart surviving more than a couple of days.

With this in mind I went to see Sir Esmé. I proposed a bargain, a deal we could make with the Bolsheviks.

“Do you know of Litvinov?” I asked.

“A little,” Sir Esmé said, “what of it?”

“I know him. Quite well. Lockhart knows him, too; he gave him a letter of introduction to Trotsky when he came back out here. And we have him locked up in Brixton prison. I suggest that we propose a straight swap—Litvinov for Lockhart, and whoever’s being held with him.”

“Well, it’s only him now. That’s the latest news. He and Hicks were arrested, then both freed. But Lockhart was arrested again by some goon named Peters. They’ve moved him from the Lubyanka Prison to the Kremlin.”

Peters. That made sense. I thought of his boot rolling the dead prostitute over, and his chillingly banal words.
Perhaps it is for the best.

The first prison Sir Esmé referred to was in the building the Cheka used as their headquarters in Moscow, an old insurance office at number eleven Lubyanka. I didn’t know the place but I knew the Kremlin jail as something else entirely. It had a dreadful reputation; the story was that no one who’d ever been imprisoned there had left alive.

“There’s something else, too,” Sir Esmé said. “Since you’re his friend … Our people in Moscow say they’ve arrested his mistress, too. Her name is Moura Budberg. Maybe you know her?”

“Yes,” I said simply, and for once I was no longer surprised at what they knew. They knew everything, it seemed. “Yes, I know her.”

“But that’s besides the point, I’m afraid. Our concern is with our man. Ransome, I like your plan. But
I’ll
talk to Whitehall about it as if it were my scheme. If it comes from you they’ll imagine a Bolshevik scheme. You get in touch with Moscow and sound them out. Nothing definite at this stage, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. “I can talk in generalities.”

“One thing before you go. If I suggest this, I need to know it might work. Do you think the Russians will go for it? We’re not in one of your fairy tales now.”

“The Bolsheviks have many faults,” I said, ignoring his cutting remark, “but they’re a practical bunch. They love talking and sometimes they like doing deals. I think it’s our best bet.”

“I hope you’re right, Ransome. For Lockhart and for you.”

*   *   *

I walked over to the house used by the Bolshevik Legation to meet Evgenia, but was told she had already left for the day. Officially she was working as Vorovsky’s secretary, but after their nightmare journey the kind old Russian seemed to be letting her have a chance to settle into her new home.

I left Stockholm and caught a tram out to Igelboda. As I got on, I noticed a man in a suit get into the rear of the car. Something bothered me and I realized I’d seen him earlier on, outside the Bolshevik Legation. I decided I was being paranoid, and to forget about him, but when the tram got to my stop, I stayed on and ran all the way down to Saltsjobaden. From there it was a fair walk home and I set off briskly. Once or twice I was foolish enough to stop and turn around, but could see no one. I laughed at myself for my imagination and went home.

Back at Igelboda I found Evgenia. As she made some supper, I told her what had happened and what Sir Esmé had said. All the time, though, I knew that something had changed in me. As I heard myself talk, another part of me explored the feeling that had swept into me.

I felt I’d been living in limbo, at least since my arrival in Sweden, maybe for months before. Geoff’s death had been a final terrible blow, and had pushed me over the edge into a blackness that would have killed me if only it hadn’t been so cowardly.

I had left Ivy. Yes. I had lost my daughter in one way, and my brother in another. That was something to be sad about, but not to stop living for.

I’d been letting things happen to me, without making a fight, without struggling for what I wanted, but finally, finally, the action of actually doing something to help someone, had freed me.

For a short, clear evening, everything seemed so simple.

I had found a woman I loved and who loved me, and I knew that I was going to do everything I could to protect that.

8

FOR HOW LONG DID I FORGET
I was a writer?

It must have been months, a year, or more.

But Sir Esmé’s remark about living in fairy tales reminded me that once I had written a book, a good one, that had been praised and that children had loved so much they read it from cover to cover and then started at the front again.

I thought of my
Russian Tales
and realized I no longer owned a copy of my own book. I wondered if I could ask Sir Esmé to let his children just show me their copy, even once. So that I could believe I had written it, that it was not some other fantasy of my own devising.

I remember thinking about the time I’d written it. It was a happy time. I was in love again, not with a woman, but with Russia; war and Revolution had not yet engulfed me. I remember, in an early draft of the
Russian Tales,
I had decided to kill the grandfather at the end of the book. A bear comes pounding out of the woods one day, apparently for no reason, and knocks the old man down. The children are sad, so very sad, of course, but I was trying to show that pain passes, they would grieve, but they would then grow again, and become adults, so that they no longer needed anyone to look after them.

I showed that early draft to the friends I was living with, in the house in the trees near the banks of the Volkhov, and they were dismayed.

“You can’t do that!” they protested. “You can’t kill their grandfather!”

I made my case, but they would not be convinced.

“No, no, no,” they said. “It’s not that kind of book. It’s a happy book.”

And in the end, I took their advice, and brought Old Peter back to life. That’s something you can do as a writer, you have that power, and during the time in Stockholm, I was glad I had done so. Death was all around me, and I was glad I hadn’t added to the list, even in fiction.

Grandfather lifted himself up from the snow where the bear had knocked him, dusted himself off, and he lived. He lived, and now, being a character in a book who has survived to the final page, he lives forever.

But even in my book of fairy tales, little Maroosia and Vanya have no father and mother. I knew then that if I ever found time to do another book I would never again write a story about a small girl without her father. I knew then there’d be children having adventures, and maybe with some real danger, but they’d be laughing and smiling, and coming home in the evening to their mother and father to have hot chocolate by the fireside.

9

IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE MY OWN FAIRY TALE
unraveled a little more.

Genia and I enjoyed our Swedish honeymoon, I relaxed a little, and into that space our feelings for each other were able to grow.

My telegrams to Moscow worked, and we heard that Robert was to be released at last. I had earned the trust of the Intelligence Services, and the respect of Sir Esmé, if not of those who strode the corridors of Whitehall, back in London.

It was around then that Wyatt, another agent, made his silly proposal, and silly though I found it, in the end I agreed.

But I am getting this all wrong, because the first thing that happened was Lockhart’s arrival in Stockholm, on his way home.

After the dust had settled and Lockhart had made a round of official meetings, we went out for dinner, just him and me and Evgenia. We found a bustling place in the Gamla Stan, and put ourselves in the corner, away from view. We spoke in Russian for Evgenia’s benefit, and Robert told us his story.

“You look well, really,” I said, though in my heart he looked years older than when I’d last seen him only a few months before.

“Liar,” he said, but he grinned. “The food was … not great.”

“I should think not,” I said.

“Potatoes and soup,” he said. “Every day. Though Peters told me it was all they had to eat themselves.”

“Peters!” I said. “That rat.”

Lockhart shrugged.

“Arthur, I don’t know what’s what anymore. Would you believe me if I told you I have a letter in my possession that Peters has asked me to deliver? To his English wife, when I get home!”

“English?” I asked, amazed.

“Remember what I always say…”

“No one is what they seem. I know, but…”

“Listen, Arthur. I owe the man no favors. I’ve spent the worst month of my life thanks to him, but there’s always more to know about someone than you might think. I’m not sure he’s the monster we all thought he was. He told me he feels ill every time he signs a death warrant.”

I laughed bitterly.

“And that makes it all right, does it?”

“No. No, I suppose not. But I can’t hate him anymore. He was the only person I saw every day in the prison. He tried to make me as comfortable as he could. When there were idle moments we talked. About England, about history, about his wife. He misses her.”

Lockhart stopped, and took a drink, his thoughts suddenly far away. There was one thing I hadn’t dared ask him yet, though the answer was, perhaps, obvious. So very obvious to Evgenia and me, as we sat across the table from him—a table for four, with only three present.

We let him talk.

“Don’t let me drink too much tonight,” he smiled. “Miss Shelepina, you’ll make sure I don’t overdo it? It’s been a while since I had a drink. But why am I asking a Russian for help with temperance!”

We laughed, Evgenia frowned, and then we waited while a waitress brought our food. When she had gone, Robert continued his story.

“I can’t tell you what it was like, not properly. The rooms they gave me in the Kremlin were comfortable, but small. They were some kind of internal apartment, the only windows opened onto corridors outside. There were guards at each window constantly, who changed every four hours, and who woke me up all through the night. But I slept poorly anyway. I was worried out of my mind. Peters played with me, I think. He showed me all the papers, the Russian ones, full of stories about me, about how I would be tried and executed. One day, I was taken for some exercise in the yard, and the guard, who was Polish I think, told me they were having a bet. Two to one I’d be shot.

“And then there was Moura to think of…”

Again Lockhart stopped. He pushed his untouched food away and pulled his wineglass closer, filling it from the bottle at our table. He offered it to us then, but we both shook our heads.

“They had me in solitary, but Peters told me Moura was locked up with the rest of my mission in the Butyrsky jail. Every day I begged Peters to let her go, to let them all go. Whatever I might have done had nothing to do with them, I said.”

“But you’d done nothing!” I exclaimed.

Lockhart put his glass down, and stared at the table.

“I’m afraid,” he said in English, “that’s not entirely true.”

“I … what do you mean?”

“Nothing important,” he said, this time in Russian once more. “Miss Shelepina, excuse my manners. Anyway, after a week or two Peters told me that Moura had been released. The relief was enormous. Peters was in a good humor. It seemed that Lenin was getting better; he would probably pull through. That made my position a bit safer. If he had died, I wouldn’t have given tuppence for my chances.

“A day later and he brought me a package from Moura. She’d sent me clean clothes, the first I’d had for days, some food, even coffee and ham. And a pack of playing cards. The clothes and food were welcome, but it was the cards that stopped me from going crazy. I played patience all morning.”

“And what of Lenin, now?” I asked.

“Shh, Arthur,” Evgenia said, gently putting a finger to my lips. “Don’t interrupt.”

“The last I heard before I left he was sitting up in bed. Peters told me the first words he said were ‘stop the terror’ but I think that’s just a nice Bolshevik story.”

“Is the terror real?” I asked. “I didn’t want to believe it. I hoped it was Allied propaganda.”

“They may have exaggerated it,” Lockhart said, “but I’m afraid it’s true. I saw it with my own eyes. Before they moved me to the Kremlin I was in a room in the Lubyanka with a window that looked down onto the courtyard. I saw the executions myself. Three Tsarist ministers and a priest on my last day there.”

I shook my head sadly.

“I know, Arthur. I know what you’re thinking. But this is a war. It might not be as clear as the one against Germany, but Russia is at war with herself now. You always were too kindhearted. I’d say naïve, but that’s unfair. You’re a dreamer, Arthur. A visionary. You champion the underdog whether he’s right or wrong, and I’m afraid that ultimately the Bolsheviks are just dogs like the rest of us politicians. It’s not about good or bad, though we like everyone to think it is. It’s about power.”