The Forbidden Territory

XIV — Conferences in Kiev

Simon lay propped up on a chaise-longue near the window. It was over a fortnight since he had received the wound in his thigh, and thanks to Marie Lou’s care, it had healed quickly. He was able to walk a little now with the aid of a stick, but he still had to keep his leg up most of the time.

The bedroom in the hotel at Kiev to which Valeria Petrovna had brought him after she secured his release, was a gloomy place. The heavy furnishings were of a date long preceding the revolution. Simon had seen similar rooms in old-fashioned provincial hotels in France, but this had the added dreariness that little attempt had been made to obliterate the traces of its generations of fleeing occupants.

A bottle of sweet Caucasian wine stood at Simon’s elbow, and a French novel lay open on his knees, but he seemed to be deriving little pleasure from either — he was gazing vacantly out of the window at the busy street below. Kiev seemed to be a hive of activity, but much of it, he supposed, was to be attributed to the five day week.

He caught a slight sound at the door, and turned his head. “Richard!” he exclaimed, in amazed surprise.

“Hullo, Simon.” Richard closed the door quickly behind him and locked it, then walked swiftly over to the other door, which led into an adjoining room, and locked that too.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Simon’s wide smile showed his undoubted pleasure at seeing his friend.

Richard sat down on the edge of Simon’s long chair. “How’s the leg?” he asked.

“Fine — how did you know about it — and — er — about me being in Kiev?”

“It’s a long story, my boy. When will the lady be back?”

“Not for an hour, but why? She’s been wonderful.”

“Splendid,” Richard nodded. “All the same I’d rather not meet her again just yet. How about Rex and the Duke?”

“Out of it! She fixed up everything.”

“You’re sure of that, Simon?”

“Um,” Simon nodded, quickly. “They left Kiev yesterday.”

“I see. Don’t mind my asking, do you — but why didn’t you go too?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Simon, slowly. “I’m — er — getting married.”

Richard smiled. “Do I congratulate the happy man?”

Simon laughed his jerky little laugh. “Well, I never thought I would get married, somehow, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“Splendid, old boy, you know how glad I am for you if everything’s really all right. When are you bringing your bride back to England?”

“Well — er — as a matter of fact, I’m not coming back to England, you see it’s this way — Valeria Petrovna takes the New Russia very seriously. She simply wouldn’t hear of coming to England — talked about her art — that it belonged to the Russian people. Besides, she really believes that the communists are going to make a better world for everybody, and that Russia’s the one place to live. “I’ll tell you — I think there’s a lot in what she says.”

“Simon, you’re talking rot, and you know it. But seriously, are you really prepared to give up everything and live in a pigsty like this?”

Simon drew his thin hand over his long receding forehead. “No,” he confessed, “I hate it, but as she wouldn’t come to England what else could I do?”

Richard stood up. “Do you really love this woman very much, Simon?”

“Yes.” Simon nodded, gravely. “I do, never thought I’d meet anyone like her.”

“Then I’ve got one of the most unpleasant jobs I’ve ever had in my life.” Richard began to pace uneasily up and down.

“How do you mean?”

“Why, to tell you the truth about Valeria Petrovna. I suppose she never told you about seeing me in Moscow a week ago?”

“Ner.” Simon looked puzzled. “Didn’t know you’d been there.”

“Well, I have; it’s less than a week as a matter of fact, though it seems like a month in some ways. You remember you asked me to start digging round if I didn’t hear from you in three weeks? That was at Miriam’s party. Well, in the middle of February I began to get worried. I stirred up the Foreign Office, but I couldn’t get any satisfaction, so by the end of the month I decided to come over myself. When I got to Moscow it occurred to me that you might have looked up Valeria Petrovna, so I went to see her. By an incredible slice of good luck that angel, Marie Lou, was there when I arrived.”

“I see.” Simon nodded. “Of course, Valeria Petrovna told me that Marie Lou had turned up with the locket, and that she’d got her safely out of the country.”

“She did — I took her! But before we left your lady friend told me quite a lot about her plans for your future, and her views on Rex and the Duke.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.” Richard faced his friend. “Now I’m not going to ask you, Simon, if you agreed to register with the lady, or whatever they call it here, solely because you do think it would be worth giving up the old life to be with her, or if she brought some pressure to bear about De Richleau and Rex, though I’m inclined to think it was the latter, but either way, you’re not the man to sit here drinking that filthy wine unless she had promised to get your friends out of it, too!”

“Ner — of course she promised, and she has, too!”

“Don’t you believe it, my boy, Rex and the Duke are still in prison, here, in Kiev, and thank God they are. I’ve been terrified that they’d have been shot by this time.”

Simon was sitting up now, his mouth wide open.

“It’s not true, Richard. She fixed up everything. Got special permits for them to leave the country, from Stalin. It took a bit longer than in my case, but she told me, only yesterday, that they’d been taken under escort to the station, and were on their way home.”

“Then she told you a lie! She said, herself, to me, in Moscow, that the only way to get you out was to marry you and keep you here. You knew too much for them to let you leave the country. She couldn’t marry Rex and the Duke as well, and they were enemies of Russia, anyway, so they could go to the devil as far as she was concerned. I should never have left Moscow, but she threatened to turn poor little Marie Lou over to the police — so I got out while the going was good.”

“That’s days ago, Richard. About Marie Lou, it was different. She’s jealous because Marie Lou looked after my leg. Got some silly idea that the girl’s in love with me — you know what women are. She wouldn’t have handed her over to the police really, but I dare say she was glad to get her out of the way. Rex and the Duke are different, she’d never deceive me about that.”

“I’m sorry, Simon.” Richard shook his head. “I know you’re in love with her, and it’s rotten for me to have to tell you all this. I don’t say that she wouldn’t have got them out if she could, just to please you, but she’s not powerful enough. Rex and De Richleau are still here, in Kiev. I know because one of our secret service people in Vienna put me on to a gaoler called Shubin at the Kievo-Pecher-Lavra. I saw him this morning, and they’re only waiting for instructions from Moscow to have them both shot.”

“Good God! What the devil can we do?”

“I don’t know. I’m worried out of my wits.”

Simon groaned. “To think I’ve been sitting here doing nothing since Sunday. If only I’d known.”

“My dear old boy, you didn’t know. It’s no use fussing yourself about that. The thing is, what can we do?”

“What about your — er — gaoler friend?”

“No good, I tried him, he’s one of the head men. Doesn’t do ordinary duty himself. He’d be suspected at once if he attempted to tamper with any of the warders.”

“There’s one chap who was decent to us,” said Simon, slowly. “Used to be a peasant on the Plakoff estates, and remembers the Duke as a young man. Wonder if we could get hold of him?”

“What’s his name?”

“Yakovkin — big strapping fellow with a beard and a scar over one eye.”

“They might be able to arrange something between them,” said Richard, meditatively. “Anyhow, I’ll try and see my man again this evening.”

“How about mun? I haven’t got a bean.”

“I have, plenty; I got a supply from the Embassy in Vienna. But if I can arrange anything, how the devil can we get them away?”

“I’ll get Valeria Petrovna’s car.”

“Sorry, Simon, but I’m a bit nervous about bringing her into this.”

“I’ll pinch it if necessary. We go for a drive in it every morning — the people in the hotel garage know me.”

“Good for you,” Richard smiled. “But won’t they stop you at the frontier?”

“Um — perhaps, still you know what Napoleon said about the Rubicon and the Vistula!”

Richard laughed. “You’re a bit mixed in your history, old chap; but I agree. If only we can get them out the Pecher-Lavra that’s half the battle. Look here, I’d better leave you now, I don’t want Valeria Petrovna to find me here, and don’t let on to her for the moment that you know the truth about Rex and the Duke.”

Simon nodded, sadly. “No, I won’t do that yet I want to think about what I’m going to do myself first. When shall I see you again?”

“When’s the best time?”

“Tomorrow, about twelve. She’s giving a special show at the theatre tomorrow night as she is in Kiev, and she’s rehearsing in the morning. I shall be alone then.”

“Good. With any luck I’ll be able to tell you then if I’ve succeeded in fixing anything. I’ll be able to see Zakar Shubin again tonight and ask him about this Yakovkin, or rather, my beautiful wife will!”

“Your what?”

“Oh, of course I haven’t told you.” Richard looked a little sheepish. “I married Marie Lou. It was the only way for her to return here safely, and I couldn’t have done much without her.”

“Good God!” Simon laughed into his hand. “We are in a muddle — but I must say marriage seems to suit you!”

“I must go now,” said Richard, quickly. “See you tomorrow.”

Marie Lou was in her bedroom. She had agreed with Richard that it was too dangerous to sit in the lounge. Every precaution must be taken to prevent Valeria Petrovna seeing them.

Richard joined her there and told her of his interview with Simon. They would not be able to see Zakar Shubin until he came off duty again in the evening, so Richard suggested that they had better go out as they were supposed to be ordinary tourists, and the hotel people might be suspicious if they stayed indoors all day. They collected the official guide who had been attached to them, and made their way through the beautiful old square of Saint Sophia, which joins the hotels to the cathedral.

“Mind how you go,” said Richard, taking Marie Lou’s arm as they entered the gloom of the great building with its five long naves. The frescoes on the walls were quite wonderful; they were not religious subjects, but scenes of hunting and sport, dating back to the eleventh century. The guide told them that at one time a portion of the cathedral had been an ancient palace. Afterwards he took them to the Kievo-Pecher-Lavra. Before the Revolution it had been the greatest monastery in the Ukraine, now, a large part of it had been converted into a museum.

Richard was puzzled, it was here, somewhere in this vast labyrinth of buildings, that Rex and the Duke were held prisoners. He looked about eagerly for signs of warders or guards, while the guide reeled off facts and figures. Even in its decline the monastery had owned fifty thousand serfs. The monks had had a monopoly in trading in salt, and, until the Government took it over, in vodka. They had been bankers and merchants. The Metropolitan had had an income of eighty-seven thousand roubles a year. Thousands of pilgrims used to come annually from all over Russia to the Lower Lavra, or caves — great catacombs constructed in the dark ages, where the dead monks were buried; some property in the soil mummified the bodies — the guide laughed.

“The situation was such, that the ignorant people believed the papas who told them that it was their great holiness that prevented decay!”

Perhaps the prisoners were kept in the caves with the long-dead monks, thought Richard. How horrible, but he was disabused on this point as they were walking under the great flying buttresses, in the courtyard of the printery. The guide jerked his thumb towards a forty foot wall in which the lower ends of the buttresses were set.

“Cells of the popes, then,” he said. “Now it is prison — forbidden to go in — but, no matter, nothing to see.”

They left the Lavra and the guide pointed to another vast building. “See — arsenal,” he explained. “Stronghold for revolution in ’seventeen, also again in nineteen-eighteen — much fightings — see bullet marks on wall.” After which he led them back to the hotel.

“My wife is tired,” Richard informed him, as he was leaving them at the entrance. “We shall not go out this evening.”

Nevertheless when the evening came they crossed the threshold once more. In order to lessen the risk of running into Valeria Petrovna they were not having meals in the restaurant of the hotel. Richard had asked the hall-porter for the name of some restaurant in the old town, and they found their way to the place he had suggested in the ancient street of Andreyev, which leads from the palaces to the docks on the wide Dneiper. After a far from satisfactory meal they went out into the narrow, twisting streets of the quarter, the damp smell of the river came to them from the near-by wharfs, mingled with a hundred other unpleasant odours.

Marie Lou kept very close to Richard. Somewhere in these mean streets lay the drinking shop into which she had been dragged on that terrible night when she had been lost in Kiev and afraid to ask her way.

With some difficulty they found the ill-lit court they had visited in the morning. Fortunately Shubin was at home.

Zackar Shubin was a bald man with cunning eyes set close together in his head. He cursed roundly in Russian when he saw them. Did they want to bring the Ogpu about his ears? Was not one visit from foreigners, dressed as they were, enough? Two in one day was altogether too much. They had the information which he had been paid to give them, already.

Richard mollified him by placing a banknote of some value in his pudgy hand at once, without argument.

Marie Lou spoke rapidly in Russian.

Yes, he knew Yakovkin — a true son of the Ukrainian soil. A kazak to the backbone. Well, what of it?

Marie Lou questioned him about the prison organization. They sat round a bare wooden table, filthy with stains of oil and grease. A guttering candle was the only light. Richard produced his wallet from his pocket.

For an hour they talked and argued. At last Shubin was persuaded to sound Yakovkin when he came off duty the following morning and see how far the man was prepared to go. If he were successful he would slip out of the Lavra himself for half an hour and meet them at a little café that he named near the Vladimirskaya Gorka. He did not seem to think that he was likely to meet with much success. Yakovkin would certainly have to face imprisonment himself if the prisoners escaped while he was on duty. It would have to be a big sum which would tempt him to do that.

As Richard saw Shubin’s greedy eyes, fixed on his pocket-book he wondered just how much of the promised reward was likely to find its way to the unfortunate Yakovkin if he accepted.

Having peered into the foetid court to see that no one was about, Shubin thrust them out.

There was nothing they could do now but possess their souls in patience until the morning, so, as neither of them was tired, they secured seats for a cinema. The film, like all Russian films, had for its subject the eternal Five Year Plan. The photography was good, but the plot almost non-existent. Richard, however, did not care. “In England,” he told Marie Lou, “it is our custom to hold hands at the movies.” He took hers firmly in his own.

“Indeed,” she said, with a little smile; “I should like to see you holding Simon’s when you go together!” But she made no attempt to withdraw her own.

The following morning, having thrown off their guide, they were in good time at the café near the Gorka. It was with immense relief that Richard saw the fat figure of Shubin coming down the street. A tall bearded man was with him, who proved to be Yakovkin.

A hasty conference was held in low voices; it seemed that the matter could be arranged. Shubin raised certain difficulties, but Yakovkin, a shrewd, sensible man, quickly overcame them. Richard parted with half the sum agreed on as an earnest of good faith. It was a large amount, and he was loath to do so, but he had to take the risk. It was agreed that he should forward the balance from Vienna.

Immediately the details were settled Richard and Marie Lou hurried back to the hotel. “I never thought that chap Shubin would fix it,” he confessed, “but I believe he will, and I like the other fellow.”

“Yes,” Marie Lou agreed, “he looked an honest man.”

“Now, if only Simon can get the car,” Richard went on, “we’ll go in the ’plane, of course.”

At the hotel Simon was impatiently awaiting him.

“Well?” he asked eagerly, as Richard slipped into his room.

“I’ve managed it,” said Richard, excitedly. “Can you get the car tonight? That’s the important thing.”

“Umm — no trouble about that,” Simon assured him. “Tell me about it.”

“Splendid — now this is the drill. Shubin says that some prisoners escaped last year; they dug a tunnel down to the catacombs below. The flagstones were replaced, but the tunnel never filled in. Shubin’s not supposed to know that officially, because he wasn’t in Kiev at the time. He’s going to find an excuse to transfer Rex and the Duke to that cell this evening. Yakovkin will be the warder on duty. He will smuggle in an implement for them to raise the flags and provide them with directions for finding their way through the catacombs. They will come out at an exit in the southernmost fort of the old Lisia Gora. Do you think you can find that?”

“Yes, I know where that is; we passed it yesterday in the car.”

“Good; then you’ll be there with the car to meet them. The best place to try and cross the frontier is Mogilev, on the Roumanian border.”

“How far’s that?”

“About a hundred and eighty miles — ought to do that in under six hours.”

“What time did you fix?”

“Zero hour is ten o’clock. Take them a little time to get through the catacombs, though.”

Simon nodded quickly. “Good; Valeria Petrovna will be in the middle of her show. This is wonderful, Richard.”

“Yes, if only our luck holds. Now about the frontier. I’m going by ’plane. Look!” he produced a map from his pocket, “here is Mogilev. I propose to land as near this cross-road as I can; it’s about a mile and a half to the east of the town. Then I’ll taxi you over one at a time; we all ought to be out of the country by morning. That is, unless you’re staying behind?”

“Ner” — Simon shook his head — “it’s an awful wrench, but I’ve decided to cut it out — I’m going home.”

Richard smiled sympathetically. “I know just how you must feel, old chap, but you’d hate it here after a bit, and I suppose it’s mean to be glad about it, but I should miss you terribly.”

“I know, Simon smiled sadly. “What about Marie Lou, is she coming with us in the car?”

“Oh no, I can’t risk having her mixed up in this. She’s got a perfectly good English passport now, thank God, and she leaves the country in the proper way.”

“Look out,” whispered Simon, as the door handle rattled.

Like a flash Richard had crossed the room and opened the door leading into Valeria Petrovna’s bedroom. “Ten o’clock,” he whispered, as he disappeared. A minute later he stepped out into the passage through the other door of Madame Karkoff’s room.