Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 7 (1/3)

VII

Finland

Stáraya Derévnya, which means “the Old Village,” is a remote suburb of Petrograd, situated at the mouth of the most northerly branch of the River Neva, overlooking the Gulf of Finland. It is a poor and shabby locality, consisting of second-rate summer villas and a few small timber-yards and logmen’s huts. In winter when the gulf is frozen it is the bleakest of bleak places, swept by winds carrying the snow in the blizzard-like clouds across the dreary desert of ice. You cannot tell then where land ends and seas begins, for the flats, the shores, the marshes, and the sea lie hidden under a common blanket of soft and sand-like snowdrifts. In olden times I loved to don my skis and glide gently from the world into that vast expanse of frozen water, and there, miles out, lie down and listen to the silence.

A few days after I had parted from Stepanovna in the Kazan Cathedral, I sat in one of the smallest and remotest huts of Stáraya Derévnya. It was eleven o’clock of a dark and windless night. Except for the champing of a horse outside, the silence was broken only by the grunting and snoring of a Finnish contrabandist lying at full length on the dirty couch. Once, when the horse neighed, the Finn rose hurriedly with a curse. Lifting the latch cautiously, he stole out and led the animal round to the seaward side of the cottage, where it would be less audible from the road. Having recently smuggled a sleigh-load of butter into the city, he was now returning to Finland⁠—with me.

It was after midnight when we drove out, and, conditions being good, the drive over the sea to a point well along the Finnish coast, a distance of some forty-odd miles, was to take us between four and five hours. The sledge was of the type known as drovny, a wooden one, broad and low, filled with hay. The drovny, used mostly for farm haulage, is my favourite kind of sledge, and nestling comfortably at full length under the hay I thought of long night-drives in the interior in days gone by, when someone used to ride ahead on horseback with a torch to keep away the wolves.

In a moment we were out, flying at breakneck speed across the ice, windswept after recent storms. The half-inch of frozen snow just gave grip to the horse’s hoofs. Twice, suddenly bumping into snow ridges, we capsized completely. When we got going again the runners sang just like a sawmill. The driver noticed this too, and was alive to the danger of being heard from shore a couple of miles away; but his sturdy pony, exhilarated by the keen frosty air, was hard to restrain.

Some miles out of Petrograd there lies on an island in the Finnish Gulf the famous fortress of Kronstadt, one of the most impregnable in the world. Searchlights from the fortress played from time to time across the belt of ice, separating the fortress from the northern shore. The passage through this narrow belt was the crucial point in our journey. Once past Kronstadt we should be in Finnish waters and safe.

To avoid danger from the searchlights, the Finn drove within a mile of the mainland, the runners hissing and singing like saws. As we entered the narrows a dazzling beam of light swept the horizon from the fortress, catching us momentarily in its track; but we were sufficiently near the shore not to appear as a black speck adrift on the ice.

Too near, perhaps? The dark line of the woods seemed but a stone’s throw away! You could almost see the individual trees. Hell! what a noise our sledge-runners made!

“Can’t you keep the horse back a bit, man?”

“Yes, but this is the spot we’ve got to drive past quickly!”

We were crossing the line of Lissy Nos, a jutting point on the coast marking the narrowest part of the strait. Again a beam of light shot out from the fortress, and the wooden pier and huts of Lissy Nos were lit as by a flash of lightning. But we had passed the point already. It was rapidly receding into the darkness as we regained the open sea.

Sitting upright on the heap of hay, I kept my eyes riveted on the receding promontory. We were nearly a mile away now, and you could no longer distinguish objects clearly. But my eyes were still riveted on the rocky promontory.

Were those rocks⁠—moving? I tried to pierce the darkness, my eyes rooted to the black point!

Rocks? Trees? Or⁠—or⁠—

I sprang to my feet and shook the Finn by the shoulders with all my force.

“Damn it, man! Drive like hell⁠—we’re being pursued!”

Riding out from Lissy Nos was a group of horsemen, five or six in number. My driver gave a moan, lashed his horse, the sleigh leapt forward, and the chase began in earnest.

“Ten thousand marks if we escape!” I yelled in the Finn’s ear.

For a time we kept a good lead, but in the darkness it was impossible to see whether we were gaining or losing. My driver was making low moaning cries, he appeared to be pulling hard on the reins, and the sleigh jerked so that I could scarcely stand.

Then I saw that the pursuers were gaining⁠—and gaining rapidly! The moving dots grew into figures galloping at full speed. Suddenly there was a flash and a crack, then another, and another. They were firing with carbines, against which a pistol was useless. I threatened the driver with my revolver if he did not pull ahead, but dropped like a stone into the hay as a bullet whizzed close to my ear.

At that moment the sledge suddenly swung round. The driver had clearly had difficulty with his reins, which appeared to have got caught in the shaft, and before I realized what was happening the horse fell, the sledge whirled round and came to a sudden stop.

At such moments one has to think rapidly. What would the pursuing Red guards go for first, a fugitive? Not if there was possible loot. And what more likely than that the sledge contained loot?

Eel-like, I slithered over the side and made in the direction of the shore. Progress was difficult, for there were big patches of ice, coal-black in colour, which were completely windswept and as slippery as glass. Stumbling along, I drew from my pocket a packet, wrapped in dark brown paper, containing maps and documents which were sufficient, if discovered, to assure my being shot without further ado, and held it ready to hurl away across the ice.

If seized, I would plead smuggling. It seemed impossible that I should escape! Looking backward I saw the group round the sledge. The Reds, dismounted, were examining the driver; in a moment they would renew the pursuit, and I should be spotted at once, running over the ice.

Then an idea occurred.

The ice, where completely windswept, formed great patches as black as ink. My clothes were dark. I ran into the middle of a big black patch and looked at my boots. I could not see them!

To get to the shore was impossible, anyway, so this was the only chance. Jerking the packet a few yards from me where I might easily find it, I dropped flat on the black ice and lay motionless, praying that I should be invisible.

It was not long before I heard the sound of hoofs and voices approaching. The search for me had begun. But the riders avoided the slippery windswept places as studiously as I had done in running, and, thank heaven! just there much of the ice was windswept. As they rode round and about, I felt that someone was bound to ride just over me! Yet they didn’t, after all.

It seemed hours and days of night and darkness before the riders retreated to the sledge and rode off with it, returning whence they had come. But time is measured not by degrees of hope or despair, but by fleeting seconds and minutes, and by my luminous watch I detected that it was only half-past one. Prosaic half-past one!

Was the sombre expanse of frozen sea really deserted? Kronstadt loomed dimly on the horizon, the dark line of woods lay behind me, and all was still as death⁠—except for the sea below, groaning and gurgling as if the great ice-burden were too heavy to bear.

Slowly and imperceptibly I rose, first on all fours, then kneeling, and finally standing upright. The riders and the sledge were gone, and I was alone. Only the stars twinkled, as much as to say: “It’s all over! ’Twas a narrow squeak, wasn’t it? but a miss is as good as a mile!”

It must have been a weird, bedraggled figure that stumbled, seven or eight hours later, up the steep bank of the Finnish shore. That long walk across the ice was one of the hardest I ever had to make, slipping and falling at almost every step until I got used to the surface. On reaching light, snow-covered regions, however, I walked rapidly and made good progress. Once while I was resting I heard footsteps approaching straight in my direction. Crawling into the middle of another black patch, I repeated the manoeuvre of an hour or two earlier, and lay still. A man, walking hurriedly toward Kronstadt from the direction of Finland, passed within half-a-dozen paces without seeing me.

Shortly after daylight, utterly exhausted, I clambered up the steep shore into the woods. Until I saw a Finnish signboard I was still uncertain as to whether I had passed the frontier in the night or not. But, convincing myself that I had, though doubtful of my precise whereabouts, I sought a quiet spot behind a shed, threw myself on to the soft snow, and fell into a doze.

It was here that I was discovered by a couple of Finnish patrols, who promptly arrested me and marched me off to the nearest coastguard station. No amount of protestation availed to convince them I was not a Bolshevist spy. The assertion that I was an Englishman only seemed to intensify their suspicions, for my appearance completely belied the statement. Seizing all my money and papers, they locked me up in a cell, but removed me during the day to the office of the Commandant at Terijoki, some miles distant.

The Commandant, whom I had seen on the occasion of my last visit to Finland, would, I expected, release me at once. But I found a condition of things totally different from that obtaining six weeks earlier. A new commandant had been appointed, who was unpersuaded even by a telephone conversation conducted in his presence with the British representatives at the Finnish capital. The most he would do was to give me a temporary pass saying I was a Russian travelling to Helsingfors: with the result that I was re-arrested on the train and again held in detention at the head police office in the capital until energetic representations by the British Chargé d’Affaires secured my release, with profuse apologies from the Finnish authorities for the not unnatural misunderstanding.

The reader will, I hope, have become sufficiently interested in my story to inquire what were the circumstances which led to my taking this sudden journey to Finland. They were various. Were I writing a tale of fiction, and could allow free rein to whatsoever imagination I possess, I might be tempted at this point to draw my story to a startling climax by revealing Zorinsky in the light of a grossly misunderstood and unappreciated friend and saviour, while Stepanovna, the Journalist, or the Doctor would unexpectedly turn out to be treacherous wolves in sheep’s clothing, plotting diabolically to ensnare me in the toils of the Extraordinary Commission. As it is, however, fettered by the necessity of recording dull and often obvious events as they occurred, it will be no surprise to the reader to learn that the wolf, in a pretty bad imitation of sheep’s clothing (good enough, however, to deceive me), turned out actually to be Zorinsky.

It was the day after I had parted from Stepanovna that the Doctor told me that Melnikoff’s friend Shura, through sources at his disposal, had been investigating the personality of this interesting character, and had established it as an indisputable fact that Zorinsky was in close touch with people known to be in the employ of No. 2 Gorokhovaya. This information, though unconfirmed and in itself proving nothing (was not the Policeman also in close touch with people in the employ of No. 2 Gorokhovaya?), yet following on the news of Melnikoff’s death and Zorinsky’s general duplicity, resolved me to seek the first opportunity to revisit Finland and consult Ivan Sergeievitch.

There were other motives, also. I had communicated across the frontier by means of couriers, one of whom was found me by the Doctor, and another by one of the persons who play no part in my story, but whom I met at the Journalist’s. One of these couriers was an N.C.O. of the old army, a student of law, and a personal friend of the Doctor: the other a Russian officer whose known counterrevolutionary proclivities precluded the possibility of his obtaining any post in Soviet Russia at this time. Both crossed the frontier secretly and without mishap, but only one returned, bearing a cipher message which was all but indecipherable. Sending him off again, but getting no reply, I was in ignorance as to whether he had arrived or not, and, left without news, it was becoming imperative that I repeat my visit to the Finnish capital.

Furthermore, with passage of time I felt my position, in spite of friends, becoming not more secure, but rapidly less so. What might suddenly arise out of my connections with Zorinsky, for instance, no one could foresee, and I determined that the best thing would be to disappear completely for a short period and, returning, to start all over afresh.

I learned of the ice-route to Finland from my courier, who came back that way, and who returned to Finland the following night on the same sledge. Discreet inquiries at the logman’s hut produced the information that the courier’s smuggler, granted that he had safely reached Finland, was not due back for some time, but another one had arrived and would take anyone who was willing to pay. The sum demanded, two thousand marks, when converted into foreign exchange, was about twenty pounds. But the Finn thinks of a mark as a shilling.

As ill-luck would have it, I found on arrival in Finland that Ivan Sergeievitch was in the Baltic States and no one knew when he would return. But I saw his wife, who had sent the indiscreet message to Petrograd leading to Varia’s arrest. She was mortified when I broke this news to her, but was unable to throw any light on Zorinsky. I also met several other Russian officers, none, however, who had known Melnikoff, and I thus got no further information.

The Doctor, of course, had denounced Zorinsky as a provocateur, but there was as yet little evidence for that charge. Zorinsky might be an extortionist without being a provocateur. Wild charges are brought against anybody and everybody connected with Sovdepia on the slightest suspicion, and I myself have been charged, on the one hand, by the Bolsheviks with being a rabid monarchist, and, on the other, by reactionaries with being a “subtle” Bolshevik. However, my aversion to Zorinsky had become so intense that I resolved that under no pretext or condition would I have anything more to do with him.

My time in Helsingfors was occupied mostly with endeavours to obtain official assurances that any couriers I despatched from Russia would not be seized or shot by the Finns, and that reasonable assistance should be given them in crossing the frontier in either direction. The Finnish Foreign and War Offices were willing enough to cooperate, but appeared to have but little sway over their own frontier authorities. The last word belonged to the new Commandant at Terijoki, a man of German origin, who defied the Government whenever instructions ran counter to his open German sympathies. Being in league with German Intelligence organizations in Russia, he was naturally disinclined to do anything that would assist the Allies, and it was only when his insubordination passed all limits and he was at last dismissed by the Finnish Government that facilities could be granted which made the operation of a secret courier service across the frontier in any degree feasible.