Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 27
No, she thought. This was it, the fateful summer, and she owed it to people like Zoya to stay. If she couldn’t get her stories out, then she’d find some other way to help. Kollontai, she realized, had actually provided her with one of the latter. Inessa Armand was organizing a major women’s conference for the autumn, and Kollontai had suggested that Caitlin write a piece about it. Kollontai had even given her a letter of introduction.
Next morning she walked across town to the old Rabotnitsa offices on Kamergersky Street. The socialist women’s journal had ceased publication for lack of paper the previous spring, but the rooms in which it had been edited and printed were currently being used by Armand and her small staff of helpers. Over the last year, Caitlin’s and Inessa’s paths had crossed on several occasions, but they had never shared more than a few words until now. The Frenchwoman, who had lived in Russia for most of her life and who gossips claimed had once been Lenin’s mistress, put on her glasses to read through Kollontai’s letter. She was in her forties and, like all the Bolsheviks that Caitlin had met, looked weary to the bone.
“So what do you have in mind?” she asked.
Caitlin explained that the lack of a link to the outside world meant the story would have to wait. But was there any way in which she could help, any translation work that needed doing? Any typing?
Armand smiled. “We always need help, and yes, I’m sure we could find work for you. Where are you staying?”
“At the Frantziya. But it’s too expensive. I have to move.”
“Ah, I know we can help you there. There’s a house on the other side of the river where several of our women live. Most are volunteers from the provinces, and the party gave us a home for them. I’m sure we can get you a room. There’s no rent, but everyone shares in the chores.”
At the end of the working day, two of the other women took Caitlin along. The room in the eaves was small but perfectly adequate. The house itself—a decaying mansion with over twenty rooms—was sparsely furnished but scrupulously clean; the other women, most of whom seemed younger than her, were full of welcoming smiles. Aunt Orla would have loved it, Caitlin thought.
When she returned from collecting her suitcase at the hotel, she sat around the kitchen table with several other women, discussing lives and work and boyfriends. She could have been anywhere, she thought, but quickly realized that wasn’t true. It had needed a revolution to bring these women together and to give them a home like this one.
14
Selling the Past
It was Wednesday, July 10, according to the newspaper McColl picked up from the stand outside the station. If the cloud-free sky was any guide, a hot day was in prospect, but with the sun only recently risen, it still felt a trifle chilly.
Beside him Fedya was gazing openmouthed at the impressive station façade, reminding McColl of his own first trip to Glasgow. “They’re only bricks,” his father had said, sounding clever and missing the point.
“Is that a tram?” the boy asked, pointing a finger.
“It is. But first we need to know where we’re going.”
Several people at the stop were keen to help them out. One had heard of Grocholski Street and thought it was up near the Sukharev Tower. Others knew which trams to take down Bolshaya Tverskaya Yamskaya and which to change to on Sadovaya.
Their first streetcar was crowded with people riding to work. The smell of unwashed bodies waxed and waned, strong at stops, weaker as the vehicle gathered speed and sucked in the cool morning air. As they neared Sadovaya, McColl could see the Kremlin in the distance, its golden cupolas glinting in the morning sunshine. Pointing this out to Fedya, he realized again how much he would miss him. It might have been just a month, but in that time he’d grown to . . . to what? To like the boy? To love him? A bit of both, he thought. McColl had no idea how it felt to have a son, but his mother had once assured him that he’d been more like a father to Jed than the real one ever had. Maybe being in loco parentis suited him.
From everything Fedya had said about his uncle, McColl was expecting to like Rodion Rozmirov. Assuming, that is, he was there. It was several months since the boy’s dying mother had passed on her brother’s Moscow address and God knew how many months before that since she had actually heard from him. The man might have moved several times by now, in or out of Moscow, in which case he’d take some finding. McColl imagined asking Cumming for a few weeks’ leave to seek out a missing Bolshevik and smiled to himself.
Fedya was staring wide-eyed out the window. The crossroads at which they alighted was full of scurrying people, its imposing buildings plastered with posters and banners proclaiming the new promised land. As they waited for another tram, McColl took note of the numerous men, both in and out of uniform, who seemed to have nothing to do but watch.
Their tram arrived. Its driver thought Grocholski Street was one street up from Sadovaya, near the botanical gardens. “I’ll tell you when to get off and which way to walk. Then you can ask someone.”
They did as he suggested and eventually found the street. The three-story house at number 33 looked better kept than most, probably thanks to the middle-aged woman busily sweeping the steps.
Her eyes narrowed when she heard the name Rozmirov. “Are you relatives?” she asked after a lengthy pause.
“I’m his nephew,” Fedya piped up.
The old woman cupped her face in her hands. “I’m afraid he’s dead, my dear.”
Fedya’s face crumpled, and McColl could see him holding back the tears.
“He was killed in the fighting. He’s buried in the Brotherhood Grave, in Red Square.”
Inside, over tea, she told them a little more. While Petrograd’s revolutionary struggle had lasted barely a day and been virtually bloodless, its counterpart in Moscow had lasted six and cost eight hundred lives. Fedya’s uncle had been one of those killed, heading off one morning to join his Red Guard unit and never coming back. “The man who came to see us said he died during the street fighting, which was something. A lot of them were executed by the Whites before they got the chance to fight.” She looked at Fedya. “He was a good neighbor,” she said. “A good man.”
“I haven’t seen him since I was seven,” Fedya replied. “But I wish I had.” He glanced at McColl, eyes heavy with hopelessness. What now? was the unspoken question.
What indeed? There was no one else in Moscow with whom McColl could leave the boy. And if he could take him back to Bucha—which he couldn’t—there was no one there to look after him. It would have to be a home of some sort—given how many Russians had died leaving children behind over the last few years, there had to be places like that. They were probably awful, but what other choice did he have? He would find the boy a good one.
Fedya must have guessed what was passing through McColl’s mind. “I can look after myself,” he said quietly as they started back toward Sadovaya. “Once I know where things are,” he added, somewhat spoiling the impression.
“We’ll see,” McColl told him. “We’re going to another house now, the one where I thought I might be staying. Maybe we both can. But when we get there, don’t start asking questions, not in front of anyone else. Understand?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, you don’t need to. Just don’t say anything, all right?”
“All right.”
The safe house was a longish walk away, north of the Sukharev Tower and market in the Meshchanskaya district. The houses here were smaller, grubbier, and closer together, the air full of smoke from nearby stations and yards. The address that Davidson had given him belonged to a wooden cottage someone had forgotten to pull down when the surrounding terrace was put up.
The tall, blue-eyed, chubby-cheeked young man who answered McColl’s knock looked like an Englishman in Russian clothes. Which he was.
McColl introduced himself with the appropriate pass sentence, and received the correct reply. “I’ve got someone with me,” he said, gesturing toward Fedya, whom he’d asked to wait on the pavement.
The young man did a double take. “You mean that child?”
“Yes. A long story. He doesn’t know I’m English, so we need to talk Russian. You do speak it?”
“Oh, like a native,” the man said in that language. His grammar was correct, his accent appalling. “I’m Roger Bowers, by the way. Sergei Vasileyovich Bazarov to our Russian friends. And the Vecheka, of course.”
McColl hoped the man’s espionage skills were better than his Russian. He called Fedya over, and they all went inside. “I take it you need somewhere to sleep,” Bowers said in Russian. “We have three empty rooms at the moment, but a couple of . . . of visitors are due over the next few days, so the two of you may have to share.”
“We’re used to it,” McColl said dryly.
While Fedya was out back having a piss, McColl explained the situation. “We traveled here together from Ukraine. Fedya’s parents are both dead, and he was hoping to live with his uncle in Moscow. But we’ve just found out that he’s dead, too.”
“So you’re going to . . . ?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ll have to find him somewhere to live. In the meantime . . . Look, he knows I’m part of a clandestine group fighting the Germans, so seeing men come and go won’t seem strange. And I’ll get it sorted out in a few days.”
“Fine. I’m off to work now—I’m a projectionist at a cinema near the market, so I won’t be back till around eleven. If anyone arrives and they ask for Boris Menzhinsky, invite them in and ask them to wait. If they don’t ask for Boris, they’ll probably be Chekists and they’ll have the place surrounded.” He laughed. “There’s bread and tea in the kitchen, but not a lot else, I’m afraid. I’ll see you later.”
By the time Bowers returned, Fedya was asleep in their bed and McColl could pump his host for all the latest news. “I expected to find Moscow on a war footing,” he told Bowers. “It looks as peaceful as London.”
“Oh, that’s because you missed all the fun,” Bowers said, sitting down at the table. “God, I stink of cigarettes,” he complained. “Some nights I can hardly see the screen through the smoke.”
McColl poured him a glass of tea. “The fun?” he prompted.
Bowers smiled. “The LSRs had a brainstorm. They decided to go after the German ambassador and the Bolsheviks. They got Mirbach, but the Cheka got them. Spiridonova and all her chums are locked up in the Kremlin, waiting to see how much mercy Lenin has left. And while they were running riot here in Moscow, Savinkov’s lot mounted a rising in Yaroslavl. Ended in tears, but our informers tell us the Bolsheviks all had their bags packed. Just in case.”
“Were the two risings coordinated?” McColl wondered.
“Who knows? If they were, it wasn’t by us. The French may have been in on the LSR business, but Savinkov’s one of ours, and if he was coordinating with anyone, it was probably General Poole in Murmansk. If so, they got the wires crossed.” Bowers grunted. “And not for the first time.”
“What about the Czechs?” McColl asked him. “Are we backing them?”
“It was our gallant French allies who brought them on board, but they’ll be fighting with us if Poole ever gets a decent force into Archangel. A joint front from there to the lower Volga, and then we all push west—that seems to be the general idea. Shove the Bolsheviks out of the way and get back to fighting the Germans.”
“You sound less than convinced.”
Bowers shrugged. “I’ve been here a while.”
“And?”
The other man sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t lift a finger to save the Bolsheviks. But I like the Russians, and the last thing they need after what they’ve been through is a bloody civil war.”
“But if that’s the only way to reopen an Eastern Front . . .” McColl suggested, playing devil’s advocate.
Bowers scratched his head and yawned. “Maybe it sounds like an idiot’s plan because I can’t see the whole picture.” He smiled to himself. “Why don’t you ask the chief tomorrow? He wants to give you an official welcome. And no doubt put you back to work.”
“Where and when?” McColl asked.
It was even hotter next day, the sort of wet, clinging heat that McColl had always hated. Sitting on the wrought-iron bench, his Russian blouse stuck to his back, he found himself remembering Calcutta in 1915. He’d never known either of his grandmothers, but in the weeks before the monsoon he’d have sacrificed both for a working electric fan.
The empty bandstand was twenty yards away, the radial paths of Sokolniki Park fanning out behind him. And if he wasn’t mistaken, the man striding in through the distant gates was Gerald Northcutt, the man in charge of Cumming’s Moscow operation. The timing was right, and so was the newspaper under his arm. And Bowers had said he was tall.
McColl stayed in his seat while Northcutt did a circuit of the bandstand, just to be sure that no one had followed him into the park. In his seedy suit and badly scuffed shoes, the section chief looked like a low-level bureaucrat, which was doubtless the intention. Yet there wasn’t much he could do about his face, which even behind a mustache and beard looked anything but Slavic.
Approaching him, McColl pointed at the paper and popped the prearranged question: Was there any fresh news from the Volga front?
“Some good, some bad,” was the expected reply, the accent much better than Bowers’s. “Let’s walk,” Northcutt suggested.
They headed up one of the paths, holding their tongues until certain that no one could hear them. To McColl’s surprise, most of the trees and some of the wildlife had survived the winter shortages—he even saw a squirrel rocketing up the trunk of an ancient red oak.
When Northcutt finally opened the conversation, what he said was a shock. “I believe you know—knew—a woman named Caitlin Hanley.”
“Yes,” McColl said, and left it at that. Cumming had not mentioned Caitlin since her return to America in 1916, and as far as McColl knew, his boss thought their love affair over. Keeping an eye on his agent would have quickly revealed this mistake, but why would Cumming have had McColl followed when he was patently doing his job? So his occasional trysts with Caitlin should have escaped attention.
“She’s here in Moscow,” Northcutt was saying.
“Oh,” was all McColl could manage as he tried to keep the involuntary leap of his heart from showing on his face. He knew he dared not see her, but still . . .
“She was on our weekly list of foreign arrivals,” Northcutt said, answering the question that McColl was still trying to formulate. “And one of our people recognized the name and remembered her connection to you.”
“I see. Well, she is a journalist, and this is a story.”
Northcutt grunted. “She’s helping to make them these days. As of this week, she has a job with one of their new women’s organizations. But that’s by the by. The chances of your running into her are pretty remote, but you never know. And what I need to ask you is this: Would she shop you to her Bolshevik friends? If the answer’s yes, then for all our sakes we have to get you out of Moscow.”
“No,” McColl said shortly. “She wouldn’t.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am.”
Northcutt gave him one more questioning look, then let the matter be. “Enough said, then. Let’s get down to business.” He paused as a walker went past in the other direction. “A couple of months ago, we acquired an antique shop in the Arbat district—at 27 Bolshaya Nikitskaya, to be precise—and one of our people has been running it. And making a profit, believe it or not. As he told me himself—when the rich are so desperate to sell, it’s almost impossible not to. Anyway, he’s needed in Ukraine, so you’ll be taking his place, at least for a week or so. Maybe longer. It’s a good cover, and you can always shut the shop when there’s more important work to do.”
“Okay,” McColl said, imagining the scene if Caitlin walked in.
“Papers,” Northcutt said. “Bowers says the ones you have—a photographer, I believe—are good for a couple of days, so carry on using those while we find you some new ones. We try to use Cheka papers when we can—they get you in anywhere, and no one likes to challenge them.”
A train was audible up ahead, and the end of the trees was in sight. “Time to turn back,” Northcutt said, stopping and wiping his brow with an already damp handkerchief. “I used to think Russia was all about sleigh bells and snow,” he added, in a tone that suggested he’d been badly deceived. “Bowers told me you have a young boy with you,” he went on. “One you picked up in Ukraine?” he added, unable or unwilling to conceal a broad hint of disapproval.
McColl explained the circumstances of their meeting and Fedya’s need to reach Moscow. “I thought he’d provide excellent cover, and I was right.”
“Mmm. Where is he now?”
“Watching a film at Bowers’s cinema.”
“And what are you planning to do with him?”
“Find him a home.”
“Good. As quickly as possible, please. If things go the way we want them to, you won’t have the time to look after children. I’m not sure yet, but I should have a job for you early next week. Delivering money to one of our Russian allies. A group called the Trust—you know about them? They’re people from the old regime, more reliable than some of the others, but they need a little pushing.”
“And they’re prepared to fight the Germans,” McColl assumed.
“Of course.”
“How are things going in France? I’ve been out of touch.”
